


Seeking the Star

by rui



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Cutting, Empathic/Telepathic Bond, M/M, New Magic, Rape, Self-Harm, Violence, manipulative!Dumbledore, not remotely canon compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-09 02:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 37,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rui/pseuds/rui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry returned to the Dursleys after his fifth year at Hogwarts, got really angry, and discovered a facet of magic he hadn't even previously imagined. It's a very changed Harry who begins his sixth year. What happened to the Boy Who Bloody Kept Living, and what is he going to do with all the things he now knows? </p><p> </p><p>This is a revision of the <a>Seeking the Star</a> that appeared on aff.net. The first sixteen chapters were written before books six and seven were released, and is a considerable deviation from canon in a million ways besides that, including the introduction of an entirely new facet of magic. I owe a great debt to IGToW and her story <i>A Bit of All Right</i>, from which I borrowed Schema and Soma (with permission) and inspiration. </p><p>Both the name of this story and 1-16 chapter names are derived from the Ancestral Path Tarot Deck, created by Julie Cuccia-Watts and Tracey Hoover. The meanings of the cards will be the chapter summaries, copied out of the booklet that accompanies the deck. Unfortunately, mine is far away from me and the deck is now out of print, so chapters will no longer be titled unless I get my hands on a booklet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ten of Swords, Overcome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ten of swords-going a long way to make a short point. overkill. blowing of a situation out of proportion. the drama of victimization, maintaining the victim's role as an excuse for not getting on with one's life.

Things had changed a lot over the past three months, which was why Harry was standing in the doorway of the Potions Master's office, clutching the Pensieve to his chest and feeling suddenly nervous. Snape didn't seem to notice him, and he couldn't seem to make his left hand release the Pensieve and knock on the door frame. Memories of the summer swirled through his brain like the thick brew of thoughts in the Pensieve as he forced himself to remember why it was so important to do this.

***

Dumbledore's confession of fallibility had shaken him to his very core, and he went back to the Dursleys feeling betrayed by everyone. In fact, he had been deeply angry at just about everyone and everything. The Dursleys were only slightly cowed by the threats of the members of the Order, and while they had stopped with the overt abuse, they still worked him to the bone and fed him little. As he got angrier, his nightmares got worse, until he had basically stopped sleeping at all. A few weeks into the summer, it had all come to a head. 

He had stopped sleeping, and everything he ate came right back up into the toilet. His hands hadn't stopped shaking at any point in the past five days, and he was starting to drop things. His whole body ached with the anger he directed at the entire universe. And then, in a moment of pure, transcendent rage, he almost broke his wand. Nearly cracked it right in half like he could throw his destiny away with that paired phoenix feather.

It was the sign Harry needed that it was too much. And that day, when he had almost broken his wand between his maniacally twitching hands out of sheer hate for Dumbledore and Sirius and the Weasleys and Hermione, who had all abandoned him, he stopped. He stopped and looked at himself, Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Bloody Kept Living, nearly sixteen and about to snap the object most strongly tying him to what he truly was. And then he heard a little voice in his head, the one that sometimes sounded remarkably like Hermione but today was his own voice, soft but utterly sure.

_‘Maybe, Harry, that's just what he wants. Maybe he wants you to be angry, to eat yourself from the inside. Maybe all this hatred is his tool._

_Maybe, Harry, you need to stop just being angry and start figuring out why these things are.’_

It was something of a revelation. He sat there, in utter stillness, contemplating himself. Maybe it was true, he was too angry, and that anger was pointless, or at least useless. He wasn’t going to save the world by being enraged at all the people who were supposed to be his allies. But how to resolve it? He was angry at Dumbledore for betraying him, for making his life utterly miserable, but most for shattering his faith in the invincibility of the old wizard. He had revealed weakness to Harry, utterly destroying the possibility that everything could come out right solely through his actions. Dumbledore could be blinded, and the knowledge was a crushing blow to Harry's faith.

 _‘But,’_ he thought, _‘everyone makes mistakes. I definitely have, and my mistakes...my mistakes_ kill _people. He may be the most powerful wizard in the world, but he's only a man. And he was doing what he thought best. And he loves me. If nothing else, his mistakes prove that. He hurt me because he wanted to protect me. And he wanted to protect me because he loves me, and because he needs me.’_ And with that realization, the anger towards Albus Dumbledore abated, then vanished entirely.

Harry sat on his hard mattress for hours, naming each person he was angry at and picking apart his reasons. It was an entirely new experience for him, to analyze his own motives and emotions, one that started out frustrating but got easier as he went. He found that reasoning out his anger made it slowly dissipate, and the less angry he was, the easier it was to let go of it. As he became calmer and more focused on his task, he found he could feel something deep within himself that he had never noticed before, a knot that rested at his center, almost tangible. When he closed his eyes and felt for it, it congealed into seeming solidity before him. He was looking inside himself at a complex web of colored threads, but not threads so much as light, or magic, made solid suddenly behind his eyelids. 

As he peered deeper into the web, it rushed up to meet him in painstaking detail, like changing the magnification of a microscope. It was somewhere between a spiderweb, a tapestry, and a great knot in three dimensions, and every thread reverberated with something that uniquely pulsed 'Harry Potter'. He stared at it, puzzling out the meanings of the threads, many of which seemed to extend out of him and into a distance he couldn't fathom. It all slowly began to fall into place for him, and as he understood his tapestry, some threads became more apparent than others. They had not changed, precisely, just become somehow more obvious, like snags where there should be smoothness. The threads were poisonous yellow, but as he gently touched one, stroking it with his fingertips, it made a sonorous noise and slowly changed to a deep green. He smiled in pleasure. That was himself. He had been angry at himself, and it was gone now. It was bliss.

These threads emanating from his center were the most magical things he had ever touched. They were him, and yet not him. They were his connections to the universe, but something more as well. And as he touched them, he _changed_ them, and when he did, all of the negativity they had carried evaporated. Each violently yellow string connected his anger to someone else. There was Dumbledore, and Ron, Hermione, Sirius, Remus. Everyone had a thread of his anger, it seemed. As he went to touch the threads, to undo them as he had undone his anger against himself, there was some resistance. He looked closer at each thread, and saw, faintly, that each of his threads were surrounded by others that were not his own, fine filaments that barely had any color at all, so small. He moved them closer, enlarging them until he could put fingers on each thread. As he did, he was filled with sudden meanings. Each thread was a flood of feelings and rationales that he absorbed, somehow, without any words at all. He just felt his way through.

Each time, Harry found once he had felt every thread, he understood each person's feelings toward him almost as though they were his own, and once their motives were apparent, he couldn’t hold all those negative feelings toward them anymore. No one was so simple that he could hate them purely, to say that there was no justification for the wrongs he perceived. Then his own thread would come into focus, and he could change it from the poisoning anger into the calm healthy green.

It took time to go through each thread individually. Some were harder than others. Dumbledore's was surprisingly easy, Sirius' heartbreakingly hard. But the most surprising thread by far belonged to none other than Severus Snape.

Snape had more threads wound to Harry's than he would have imagined, almost as many as Dumbledore. They were a confusing mess, winding around each other and snagging over each other. He had to come in very close to the threads to make out how they all interacted. The 'reading' process was becoming easier for him, and aided by touch and a newfound patience born of fascination, he picked gently through Snape's threads. What he read there was almost shocking, and once he was finished, he had a profound respect for the bristly Potions master. The thread between them, when Harry changed it, was so deep a green it was near black. From far away, he heard a knocking, and he pulled his attention away from the web before him. It seemed to zoom away very quickly, disappearing into his chest. As he came back to himself, he realized he was humming a steady note that seemed to vibrate through everything in the room.

“Boy, your aunt has called you three times to dinner! What are you doing in there?” Uncle Vernon sounded purple-faced on the other side of the door, and Harry made to jump up from the bed, only to find it was twilight and his legs were stiff from sitting so still for hours. He limped to the door quickly as he could and followed his annoyed but confused uncle down to dinner.

****

In the middle of a very serious meeting at Grimmauld Place, Albus Dumbledore stopped speaking in mid-sentence, and sat back and smiled one of his smiles. He steepled his fingers in front of his nose, and the other members of the Order of the Phoenix were fairly sure he even chuckled.


	2. The Fool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the fool-beginnings, the heady moment before diving into the future. the state of being untested and inexperienced. taking a leap of faith, stepping onto an untested path.

After dinner, Harry went straight back up to his room, pulled out a sheet of parchment, and wrote Dumbledore a long letter detailing what he had seen, everything he could explain about the colorful threads and what they’d meant. He rolled it up and woke Hedwig, who had been sleeping on top of his wardrobe. She took the roll of parchment obediently, and nipped his finger affectionately as he stroked her head.

"Take this to Dumbledore, okay, girl?" She rubbed her head lightly on his cheek in response and took off out the window. Harry sighed and flopped down onto his bed, making the mattress squeak threateningly. It had been a long, strange, tiring day. As he lay there, staring out the window at the darkening sky, the threads slowly came back into focus. He found himself humming the same note as before, the one that seemed to reverberate through his ribs and out into the room. It seemed to make the threads appear all around him, made them clear and sharp. His books, his wand, and his broom all had thick webs around them. The more he looked, the more he felt calling them 'threads' was woefully inadequate. They were light, they were music, and most of all they were magic. The more he looked, the less they seemed to want to be defined, even as they became clearer in his mind. He picked up his wand, studying it closely. As he concentrated, he found that he could distinguish the 'threads' by touch. Each color had a certain texture, almost, informed his mind in a particular way. He could just put his fingers over the wand and 'feel' for its magic, for the person behind it that made the magic what it was. His belongings were all so very him, charged with his very essence. He wanted to experiment more, but the only magical objects he had were his, so he decided to let it rest.

It was the first night he could remember that he had no nightmares.

A very grumpy Hedwig woke Harry as the sky just began to pink. She dropped an envelope on his head, flew up to the top of the dresser, and immediately put her head beneath her wing to sleep. Harry ripped open the envelope, suddenly wide awake and excited at the curly purple ink spelling out his name. He unfolded the letter hastily, causing a smaller envelope and a shiny American penny to fall into his lap.

_Harry,_

_There is much to share with you, but it is necessary that you return to Hogwarts immediately. Give the enclosed letter to your Aunt, pack your belongings. This portkey will activate at exactly eight-thirty in the morning and will bring you directly to my office._

_-AD_

Somehow this was more surprising to Harry than it should have been, considering he had told the Headmaster about seeing a sort of magic that no one had ever even mentioned before. He jumped out of bed with more excitement than the hour warranted, crept quietly into the bathroom, showered quickly, and padded downstairs. As it was a Thursday, his uncle had gone to work early for a weekly meeting, and as it was morning, his cousin was in bed. Aunt Petunia sat at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper. 

“Aunt Petunia?” The woman looked up from her paper at the sound of Harry's voice. “I was told to give this to you. I'm going back to school early this year.” He handed her the letter, which she snatched abruptly from his fingers and tore open savagely. She scanned the letter, lips pursed as if she had just eaten a very sour lemon. When she finished, she looked up at him.

“Well, go on then! You and your...people. Always disrupting things.” Harry smiled brilliantly at her, and ran upstairs to pack before he could even see her shocked expression. It was the first time he could remember that a Dursley had ever let him have his way without argument, and the first time he’d ever favored one with a real grin.

There was little to pack, and it only took Harry a few minutes to fill his trunk and tuck a sleepily protesting Hedwig into her cage. He went back into the breakfast nook. Aunt Petunia was still looking bemused, the letter held loosely in her hand. Something was very odd indeed about her already rather odd nephew. She started at his entrance.

“I just wanted to...” Harry suddenly lost his words in the wake of the positively strange expression on his Aunt's face. She was staring as though he’d abruptly grown a second head. “Well...thanks and goodbye,” he finished lamely, tried to make up for it by smiling the dazzling smile at her again, turned, and ran back upstairs. He only had a few minutes before the portkey activated, taking him away from Number 4 Privet Drive for the summer.

As the clock downstairs struck the half hour, Harry felt the familiar tug in his middle that indicated the activation of the portkey. He landed in Dumbledore's office in a more or less dignified fashion, which was to say that nothing breakable was knocked over besides Harry himself, though Hedwig had a near miss. She made her displeasure about it known until Harry let her out of her cage, at which point she took off for the owlry without another word.

Albus Dumbledore looked more tired than Harry remembered, but also happier. He seemed to positively shine with joy when he saw Harry. Harry was startled to find he could feel the headmaster radiating the strange _something_ he saw for the first time yesterday. 

“Oh, my boy, I'm so terribly happy for you. Please, do sit down.” He gestured and a comfortable chair appeared. Harry curled into it, leaning back into the plush and tucking up his legs. If Dumbledore had a problem with trainers on the furniture, he said nothing about it. “I'm sure you have many questions about what you saw yesterday, and hopefully I can answer most of them before you even ask.” Harry simply nodded and waited. He did have questions, but he wanted to see what the Headmaster would tell him, first. Dumbledore settled in his chair, helping himself to a sherbet lemon before steepling his hands in front of his beard and twinkling at Harry.

“What you saw yesterday is what we call the _Schemata_. In its broadest use, it refers to what you seem to see as the weave of magic itself. The _Schemata_ is a sensory manifestation of magic, and once you can sense the _Schemata_ , it is possible to learn to manipulate it. Each person has their own _Schema_ , but the _Schema_ of witches and wizards is vastly more complicated and far stronger than that of Muggles. Learning your own _Schema_ is vital to being able to practice complex magic such as advanced potions brewing and Animagus transformation. Being able to read the _Schema_ of others is absolutely essential in the healing arts, especially _Sanos_ , but is also useful for things like magical lock picking, ward removal, and advanced counter-cursing. You see, Harry, when you fully understand someone's _Schema_ , you know them to the very core, and when you can understand and tap into the _Schemata_ , well...” The Headmaster trailed off, letting his twinkling eyes and Harry's quickly working brain figure out the rest. Harry sat quietly in the chair, taking in the wealth of unexpected information.

“So, if I learn to tap the _Schemata_ , I can use it to defeat Voldemort?”

“That's one possibility. Usually, it takes a great deal of training and preparation to be able to access the _Schemata_ even on the most basic levels. From what you told me, you have access through your three primary senses, which is most unusual. Most often, the _Schemata_ manifests primarily through one sense, and a practitioner must learn to access the others. Further, your innate access to the _Schemata_ probably carries over into the _Schema_ of others, which will open up a great many doors to you, Harry. Life isn't entirely about Mr. Riddle, you know. You should think about your future.” 

These words gave Harry pause. He had never thought too deeply about his future. Mostly, he concentrated on the moment, and on Voldemort. What he would do after the defeat of the Dark Lord was a topic beyond his scope, other than the vague concept of becoming an Auror. That had more to do with the fact that Aurors were cool and Ron was enthused about it than a real idea of what he wanted to _be_ when he grew up. If he grew up. The idea of there being something beyond Voldemort was foreign, and he wondered why Dumbledore would choose now to bring it up. Harry gave a stab at an answer.

“Would it help me be a good Auror?”

“If that's what you want, Harry, it will. However, I think you should also consider some new options open to you.” _’Ah,’_ Harry thought. _’There it is. New options. I wonder what he’s got in mind for me now.’_

“It's no real matter now, though. I am hoping you'll be willing to agree to spend the summer here with me, learning how to access and control your use of the _Schema_ and the _Schemata_. A little later in the summer we can discuss some of those options I mentioned, and worry ourselves over your classes for the year.” 

Harry nodded his affirmation. He was willing to see where Dumbledore was taking him with this, mostly because he was fascinated by what he had seen. The Headmaster twinkled, and clapped his hands. “Well then, I think it would be best to keep you in a suite of rooms up here near my own, well away from the rest of the castle, no? Once you begin to tap into the _Schemata_ , you may find it rather overwhelming, and it's best to be away from other wizards when that happens.” Dumbledore rose from behind the desk and Harry followed suit. He wanted to explore this new thing, and if it helped him defeat Voldemort, so much the better. The Headmaster led the boy back through a door Harry had never noticed and into a narrow corridor. Dumbledore inclined his head in the direction of a heavy wooden door with a door knocker that looked like two entwined snakes. 

“The password to your room is 'weft', Harry, but I'm sure if you befriend Dubhe and Phecda they'll come to recognize you without it.” Dumbledore turned and went into a doorway slightly down and on the other side of the corridor. He looked back over his shoulder at Harry, and gave the boy an appraising glance. “If there's anything you need, Harry, don't hesitate to ask. I'd appreciate it, though, if you don't go on any night walks around the castle. Dobby can easily be summoned to your room if you're hungry, and if you have any other needs, don't hesitate to knock on my door.” The old wizard smiled kindly, and disappeared into his rooms with the soft click of the door closing. Harry bowed his head at the door knocker. This would be an opportunity to practice his Parseltongue.

“Greetingsss, Dubhe and Phecda.”

“Greetingsss, boy. Who are you and why are you here?”

“I am Harry Potter, and thessse are my roomsss for the sssummer.”

“We welcome you, Harry Potter. What isss the passsword?”

“Weft. Thank you, Dubhe and Phecda.”

“You may passs, Harry Potterssss. We will remember you.” The door opened with a click, and Harry levitated his trunk into his new home for the summer. Dumbledore hadn't been kidding when he said Harry had a suite of rooms. He had a sitting room, decorated in white and warm wood with familiar red and gold trimmings. His bedroom had an adjoining bath with a tub large enough to float in as well as a shower, and a window in the ceiling to let in the sky. Both the sitting room and his bedroom had many windows and were full of natural light, and both were comfortable without being overly plush. He had several comfortable chairs, a fireplace in each room, a slightly larger than normal bed, a big desk, and a small table currently mostly covered by a steaming teapot and its accompanying accessories. It was more space than he’d had to himself in his life. By the teapot was a small bell and a note in Dumbledore's handwriting: _Ring this for Dobby. -AD._ Harry had missed breakfast and it was getting well on towards lunch, so he rang the tiny bell. Almost instantly, Harry found himself navel to face with Dobby, who had somehow collected even more mismatched clothing in the few weeks since Harry had seen him last. The elf wrung his hands, visibly trying to restrain himself from hugging Harry’s leg.

“Ooooh, Mister Harry Potter, what can Dobby bring you? Does Harry Potter want sandwiches? Or soup? Oh, what does Harry Potter want?”

“I think I'll have some sandwiches, Dobby. That would be great. And some pumpkin juice. And a little chocolate, please.” 

“Yes, Harry Potter, sir! Dobby will be right back with Harry Potter's sandwiches and his pumpkin juice and his chocolate!” With a pop, the elf disappeared again, and Harry sat down and poured himself the first of many cups of tea he would consume during that long, strange summer.

***

“Yes, Potter?” The voice was sweet poison, and it startled him out of his reverie and paralysis both. He stepped into the room, the heat of Snape's anger somehow thawing him.

“Professor, I came because I have a lot of things to say to you.” He saw the Potions Master about to open his mouth, and hurried on. “No, Sir, please don't interrupt me. I did a lot of thinking over the summer, and I want you to hear me out.”


	3. Eight of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eight of swords- being held captive by one's own traditions, blinded by the path of tradition. fearing to act because of the possibility of scandal or misunderstood motives.

“Yes, Potter?” The boy, still unusually small for his age and with hair even more unruly and in dire need of cutting than usual, was hanging in the doorway, clutching what looked like Dumbledore's Pensieve. Snape hid his shock under his well practiced ire. This boy standing in his doorway looked like Harry Potter, and he sounded like Harry Potter, but his _Schema_ was so different that if he hadn't known the feel of Harry's _Schema_ so well from their Occlumency lessons, he wouldn’t have recognized it. Severus Snape was by no means an adept at fully reading the _Schema_ of others, especially without physical contact, but he could identify people and their most obvious intentions, such as truth and falsehood, from their _Schema_. Somehow, over the summer, Harry Potter's _Schema_ had changed drastically, and his access to the _Schemata_ had enhanced greatly. He wasn't using any of his strange and newfound skills now, though. Snape felt no pull on his _Schema_ indicating the touch of a beginner, and he didn't see any understanding in Potter's face that would indicate his perception of the Professor's true feelings, which were rather at odds with his firmly-fixed sneer.

“Professor, I came because I have a lot of things to say to you.” Snape was about to interrupt and ask how he learned about the _Schemata_ when he felt the pull of power towards the boy. It seemed unconscious on Potter's part, but his hair was moving as if a soft breeze had somehow permeated the dungeons and settled around his head. Snape's words died on his lips. Had Potter really gathered all of that power just because he was nervous? “No, Sir, please don't interrupt me. I did a lot of thinking over the summer, and I want you to hear me out.” And hear him out the Potions professor would, wary that the sheer amount of magic Potter had unconsciously gathered to himself would be a danger to them both if Harry's little plan was thwarted.

“I spent the summer here with Dumbledore, learning about the _Schemata_ and _Schema_. He says I've got, um, natural talent for it, like my mum or something.” Harry paused, obviously nervous. Snape merely sat, staring at the boy. “And, well, I got to know my own _Schema_ pretty well. And it taught me that I need to stop thinking just about myself. And I learned a lot of other things, too, from the threads connected to mine. Especially that I've been treating a lot of people unfairly.” Snape blinked. The boy took a deep breath and plunged on. “Dumbledore told me what a thing I'd done to you by looking into your Pensieve. And I'll admit I knew it was wrong when I did it, but it wasn't until later that I realized how wrong it was, and how I'd wronged you, and...” For the first time, Harry broke eye contact with the Potions Master, “...why you thought I was treating you just like my father did.” 

The silence dragged on for a dozen heartbeats before Harry lifted his head back up, eyes seemingly aglow with their own internal light. His voice suddenly got stronger. “And I wanted to show you that I'm not my father. It's the best apology I can make to you, to repay you in kind.” He walked slowly over to Snape's desk and set down the Pensieve. “Professor Dumbledore taught me how to use it. There's several memories in there...well, you know how to do it.” At close proximity, Harry just seemed to radiate. He was obviously still afraid of Snape, and quite unconscious of the power he had wrapped himself in to bolster his famous Gryffindor courage. Snape was fairly sure Harry was trembling, and then suddenly, the boy was in the doorway again.

“Professor Dumbledore said I could borrow the Pensieve for twenty-four hours. So I'll be back for it tomorrow.” And he disappeared before Snape could make his mouth form the words of protest in his throat. Snape sat staring at the swirling Pensieve for long moments before swishing off to find Albus Dumbledore.

Dumbledore was not surprised to see a very odd looking Severus Snape come sweeping abruptly into his office. The Potions Master looked positively flummoxed. It was all the Headmaster could do not to burst out laughing.

“Tea, Severus?”

“Thank you, Albus.” Snape sat on the other side of the Headmaster's desk and waited. Albus wouldn't tell him anything before he was ready, and the old wizard looked like he was fighting between expressions of glee and deadly seriousness. 

“You're here about Harry, aren't you?”

“And the Pensieve.” Snape sipped his tea. “He...offered me...in repayment for ‘wrongs done’ or some such noble bloody Gryffindor nonsense...”

“Hush, Severus. He's done a rather Gryffindor thing in a Slytherin way, hasn't he? He told me he wanted to apologize to you, and it was the best way he could think of to do it. He had my permission, as do you.” Snape kept his eyes in his teacup. On one hand, he was terribly curious as to what had happened to the boy over the summer to bring such a change to him, and the want for ammunition to use against famous Harry Potter was hard to resist. On the other, there was an extreme compunction against looking into the Pensieve of another, even invited in this fashion. And in yet a third hand was the fact that Potter wanted him to do it, which made him not want to do it. Dumbledore smiled at him.

“Come now, Severus. You aren't afraid to find out you've been misjudging the boy now, are you?” 

Snape frowned at Dumbledore’s tone and twinkle both. Some game was afoot. “What happened to him over the summer, Albus?”

“You'll have to ask him, Severus, if you want to know. I'm not going to keep you up to date if you haven't built some bridges. Hasn't he progressed wonderfully? I'm so terribly pleased.”

“He's almost not Gryffindor anymore, Albus.” The Headmaster's eyes twinkled so much that Snape half expected them to sparkle right out of his head.

“I think you're rather mistaken in your assumption that Gryffindors are nothing more than precocious troublemakers given to foolish bravery. Harry is becoming what Gryffindors should be, my dear Severus. Wait and see.” 

Snape put down his now empty teacup and stood. “If you have no need of me, Headmaster...”

“No, Severus. I think you have more pressing things to deal with than a doddering old wizard.” As Snape swept out of the room, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of excitement at being given permission to view Harry Potter's Pensieve. Gliding down the hall, he disturbed several students in the midst of amorous reunions and sent them skittering, terrified, back to their common rooms. Severus Snape on a mission was enough to spook the most distracted couple.

For a moment as he opened the door, he had the strange fear that the Pensieve had disappeared from his desk, and the whole evening had been some sort of strange hallucination. But it was still there, its contents glowing cloud-white in the dim office. He sat and contemplated the swirling bowl for a few long moments, before looking inside.


	4. Eight of Sacred Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eight of sacred circles-apprenticeship, learning a craft or skill, physical dexterity and skill.

Snape emerged from the Pensieve shaken and pale. Had he not known that it was impossible to pull a false memory into the bowl, he would have fully believed that Potter had somehow lied to the device. The boy had either been incredibly honest or more calculating than Snape could have expected. What he learned of Harry's life and of the past summer chilled even Snape, who had believed himself beyond such things. Noting the late hour, he undressed mechanically and climbed into bed. That night, the Potions Master's dreams were haunted by the suddenly-too-wise eyes of the Boy Who Lived.

Up in Gryffindor Tower, that green-eyed boy cried a little for the pain he had awakened in the man, a pain deep enough to resonate down the thread between them, and his sudden comprehension of why Dumbledore had been so supportive of his idea.

***

Hermione Granger was worried about Harry. His letters over the summer had vacillated between warm and expansive and tired and withdrawn, and he had never really explained what he was doing at Hogwarts during the summer holiday, other than that he was 'learning a lot'. It was really this that worried Hermione. The Harry she knew wouldn't be so terribly excited at staying at Hogwarts to do intensive studies. The Harry she knew also wouldn't be lightly touching her hand and humming a dreamy toneless note to himself either. She wiggled her fingers and the movement seemed to bring him out of his daze. He smiled gently at her.

"A lot has changed, Mione.” Harry said, as though he somehow knew what she was thinking. Then again, Hermione supposed that her emotions had always been written obviously on her face. “But it's for the best. I'll tell you about it later. Right now, breakfast." The smile was so strange. It was almost a Dumbledore smile, but with a strange bright gentleness that had none of the secrecy of Dumbledore's twinkling grins. For all that he was different from the person that she’d said goodbye to at King’s Cross, Harry seemed so very _genuine_. Mature, even, which wasn’t a word Hermione had thought she would have ever used for either of her best friends. It was like all his anger had been poured out, and he’d been filled up with something else. What could possibly have changed him so much? 

Ron, on the other hand, hadn't noticed much of Harry's difference, other than that he seemed more, well, like Hermione, except without the stuck-uppity-ness. He had stayed in the dormitory while all his roommates had unpacked and recounted their summer adventures or complained about their summer boredom, but had very little to say about how he’d passed the holiday. He happily went for a game of Exploding Snap, though, once everyone was unpacked. Ron hoped that being alone at Hogwarts for so long hadn't turned Harry into a Ravenclaw, or something equally as boring. Even when he was laughing along with the rest of the Gryffindor boys, something wasn’t quite the same about Harry. 

During breakfast, the trio compared their schedules. Harry and Hermione both had Advanced Potions, Advanced Transfiguration, and Advanced Herbology, Hermione had Advanced Arithmancy and Advanced Ancient Languages, and all three had Advanced DADA and Advanced Charms. Harry's schedule also contained two anomalies: Healing, with Madam Pomfrey, and _Schema/Schemata_ , with Professor Snape. Harry's heart had sunk a little upon reading the second one. It confirmed his idea that Dumbledore had encouraged his apology to Snape to get him to restart the Occlumency lessons, and take on the tutoring on _Schema_ and _Schemata_. Up at the Head Table, Snape was studiously avoiding Harry's questioning eyes and occasionally shooting daggers at the Headmaster. 

"Hey, mate, what are those about?" Ron was pointing at his schedule. Harry shrugged.

"It has to do with what I was learning over the summer. Dumbledore wants me to keep it up. Might help with the fight against Voldemort and all." Seemingly satisfied, Ron turned back to his porridge. It wasn’t the first time Harry had special lessons, after all. He was slightly disappointed that Harry and Hermione were in mostly advanced classes, and he wasn't. Really, he wasn't even sure how Harry had pulled off such good scores on his OWLs, since he really hadn't studied much either. Favoritism at work, maybe, except Ron couldn’t imagine even Dumbledore getting Snape to let Harry into Advanced Potions without meeting every tiny requirement.

"Well," Ron said through a mouthful of toast, "at least I don't have to deal with that greasy git anymore. I can be glad of that, anyway."

"He's really not a git," Harry said quietly. Ron’s eyes bugged as he waved his hands in front of Harry's face.

"Hel-lo! What have you done with our Harry? This is Snape we're talking about, Harry, remember? Evil Potions Master?" 

Harry couldn’t help but grin at Ron’s incredulous expression. "Ah, right, eeeevil Potions Master.” He waggled his fingers in the universal symbol for things that go bump in the night. “Oh, wow, it's already time to leave. Hermione and I have to run to Transfiguration. McGonagall will skin us for being late on the first day." Harry gathered his books and started out of the Great Hall, waiting only a minute for Hermione to follow him. She fell into step with him as they began heading up the stairs.

"Harry?" She waited for him to turn towards her, and searched his face. He saw her concern and smiled again, touching her shoulder with a hand that was bigger than she remembered. Just seeing him smile made her break out into a wide grin, poking him in the shoulder. "Oi, who are you and what did you do with Harry?" She hadn't seen a genuine smile on his face in what seemed like forever, and then there were two, just this morning. His air of brooding really seemed to be gone, and he looked very different with his dark cloud lifted. 

"I said I'll tell you, but not now, Hermione. It's a long story, and McGonagall might make us clean the trophy room if we’re late, you know?" They turned into the Transfiguration classroom, which was already beginning to fill with students from all the Houses. In the NEWTs classes, all the students were grouped together, since there weren't enough students in advanced classes to warrant the division by House.

Transfiguration was so much easier when he could see and feel the threads of things. He just tweaked at them, bending them to his will through the tip of his wand. Over the summer, Harry had learned what wands were really for, but at this point was actually more adept at accessing the _Schemata_ without one. Wandless magic allowed him the use of direct touch, which was the most powerful and direct way way to 'see' the _Schemata_. However, wandless magic was not public magic. Dumbledore had warned him at least a hundred times that doing anything without the proper swish-and-flick of a wand would earn him unwanted attention, and Harry had no particular desire to stand out in yet another way. Professor McGonagall had praised him lightly for his newly developed skills. Charms progressed in much the same manner. He and Hermione both had a break after lunch, and then Double Potions. They spent it in the library, quietly studying. Hermione was about to burst with curiosity as to when Harry had developed a penchant for quiet studying. Or, really, either of those things, even separately. But other than asking her a few questions, Harry seemed content, even engaged, in his texts.

Potions, on the other hand, was utterly grueling. Snape refused to look at Harry, who desperately wanted to speak to him. The Potions Master was neither scathing nor kind to Harry, ignoring him entirely, but in general seemed less interested in telling his NEWTs class what abject failures they were. He simply warned, in his most dangerous tone of voice, that they would have to learn a set of essential potions by heart to pass the year, and that error would not be tolerated. The absence of Neville Longbottom seemed to somehow lower the tension in the room measurably, as did the fact that the students in attendance actually wanted to learn Potions. Harry and Hermione each made a solidly correct potion, and bottled it for grading without Snape making comment to either of them. Harry could feel Draco Malfoy’s eyes on his back through the lesson, but he didn’t turn to look at the Slytherin boy. 

Once all the bottles sat on his enormous desk, Snape dismissed the class, following the order with, "Except for you, Mr. Potter." 

Harry turned back around, motioning for Hermione not to wait for him. She shrugged and headed off, looking back over her shoulder worriedly. Snape was looking fairly poisonous behind his desk, but, when he reached tentatively out towards the professor's _Schema_ , he found little anger directed at him.

"It seems that Professor Dumbledore has decided I'm not only to continue your instruction in Occlumency, but I'm also to pick up your education in _Schema_ and _Schemata_. As the Headmaster has seen fit to take up some of my precious midday free time three days a week, I think that your Occlumency classes will have to be on Tuesday and Thursday nights." The Potions Master looked like he had recently eaten something very bitter. Harry found himself sympathizing. They had been rather thoroughly outmaneuvered. 

"Sir, did you..." Harry trailed off, but kept eye contact with the professor. Snape nodded once, curtly. "May I, um, have it back, then?" Another curt nod, with a gesture to the Pensieve sitting on the second shelf in a closed cabinet. Harry retrieved it and was about to ask permission to leave when words escaped Snape's mouth, seemingly unbidden.

"Did you know that Albus was planning this?" Harry turned, shocked at the familiarity, the presumption, the fact that Snape had spoken at all.

"No, Sir. Well, I knew about the Occlumency, but not the other. If I had," he gestured at the Pensieve, "I wouldn't have done this now. He--well, Al--Professor Dumbledore has his games. And I didn't mean to be a part of this one, sir. I meant what I said." As he spoke, Harry moved closer and closer to Snape until his thighs were lightly touching the desk and the currents of his _Schema_ were easily felt. Snape stared at the boy, realizing he was telling the truth. His gesture had been genuine, and moreover he’d purposefully moved in range for the Professor to read his _Schema_. Snape found himself startled and unsettled in equal measures. The boy was artful, that was for sure, and the fact that he really meant it just made it worse. Damn Dumbledore for playing them both so well. Potter had made him a more than even exchange of memories, the boy’s power was ridiculously compelling, and the Headmaster had even managed to twist his ire away from Potter by pitting them both against his irksome plotting. He would have called it genius if it was aimed at anyone else. Snape sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to try and soothe the headache rapidly growing behind his eyes.

"Well then, Mr. Potter, it seems we've both been caught in one of the Headmaster's little games. And since we'll be spending so much time together, it may be appropriate to call an end to hostilities." Snape was preternaturally aware of the proximity of the boy, who hovered just across the desk, looking at him with all the intensity of a lightning bolt. His scar was bright white against the tan of his face, and it was only the fact that it was mostly hidden by his fringe that kept it from drawing too much attention. His eyes were deep emeralds behind his glasses, and everything about him radiated intensity. It took a moment for Snape to realize that Potter’s eyes were wide, brows raised in surprise. When he suddenly smiled, a real, genuine, joyous smile, Severus Snape almost committed one of the most undignified acts of his teaching career and nearly fell out of his chair. There wasn't a single event in his memory when anyone smiled like that at him, not since Lily Evans, and especially not for so little. 

"Thank you, Sir."

The boy turned on his heel and practically ran before he could see the look of absolute wonder solidify onto the Potions Master's face, but he felt it thrum down one of his threads like a cathedral bell.


	5. Six of Cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> six of cups-memories, childhood, the past impinging on the present.

Severus Snape was feeling decidedly uneasy. A student, who, until less than twenty-four hours ago, he had at very least mightily resented, was now on the same side of a classic Dumbledore manipulation as he was. That made them practically allies. Worse, that student had, seemingly overnight, become the possessor of more charisma and magical power than should be able to fit into such a short, skinny teenager. Even worse, said student didn't see his own charisma, yet had suddenly started understanding his position in the grand scheme of things. And worst of all, that student was Harry Potter.

_'No, scratch that,'_ Snape thought. _'Undoubtedly the worst part is that I'm starting to_ believe _the bloody Gryffindor. The whole world’s gone mad.'_ He had been sitting in his desk chair for an interminable time after Harry's departure, and he was now feeling stiff and peckish. Then he glanced at his clock, which had a hand firmly pointing to 'Late'. Snape wracked his brain for where he was supposed to be, coming up empty. Then there was a knock on the door.

"Enter," he called irritably. Potter pushed open the door and walked into the room slowly, as though expecting something out of the ordinary.

"Sir? I thought we would be having my _Schemata_ lessons in your Potions classroom? Hours ago?" The boy's face carried a look that Snape would have nearly termed concern. "I waited, but you didn't come. And then..." Potter cut himself off, as if he had been about to say one thing and decided on another "...I wondered what happened."

"Well, as you're here now, Mr. Potter, we might as well get on with it." Snape stood slowly, joints cracking loudly.

"Are you alright, Sir? Would you like me to..."

"I most certainly would not, Potter. I'm quite fine." The Headmaster had mentioned that Potter’s studies over the summer had included _Soma_ , the healing of the body using the _Schema_ of both patient and practitioner. It was a difficult art, and also an intimate one, customarily only used for the most serious of injuries. Snape had no want to deal with the boy in that fashion that evening, or one in the near future. The look on Potter's face made it fairly obvious that he knew the lie for what it was, but he said nothing. That was certainly a change, Potter ever keeping his opinion to himself. "Shall we, then?" 

Harry nodded, and Snape handed him a smooth stone paperweight that had been lying on the desk. Harry held it cupped in his palms for a moment, twisting and stroking his fingers over the stone and in the air around it. Snape watched in fascination. It looked as though he was touching something, stroking filaments too fine to be seen.

"It belongs to you. It's got...a charm to keep papers down, and...an anti-snooping device." Potter gave a small sound of amusement. "It'll smash the fingers of whoever tries to disturb the papers beneath it that isn't you." He looked up for confirmation, and received a curt nod.

"Now, change it so that you can pick up the papers too. Then we'll test your work." Potter cupped the stone again, waving his fingers in a complicated dance over and around the paperweight, moving it from one palm to the other, sweeping his fingers carefully over every surface. Then he handed the stone back to Snape, who put it on top of a pile of papers. The professor then took one of the papers out himself. The stone remained still. Potter reached over, and pulled out several of the papers without having his fingers crushed. He made to return his papers at the same moment that the Potions Master did, and their fingertips brushed. Potter looked up at his professor.

"Are you hungry, sir? I didn't see you at dinner. I'm sure we could get the house elves to bring you something to eat." Snape scowled. He was, in fact, rather peckish, now that he thought about it, but that didn't mean that he wanted to take dinner with Potter. The boy gave him a lopsided half-smile. "I swear I won't tell anyone that you get hungry, and that you don't show up in the Great Hall at meals just for show."

"Wouldn't want to ruin the Vampire myth, would we, Potter?" The boy looked up with surprise. Had Snape just made a joke?

"Absolutely not, Sir. It would reduce the scare-value of your late night hallway skulking." Snape started. Had Potter just joked back at him? The boy flashed him the quickest of smiles, which flooded in a positively shocking manner through the Potions Master. The boy's _Schema_ was ridiculously strong, and Snape almost felt compelled by the force of him, somewhat similar to the force of personality that surrounded Albus Dumbledore. The next words out of the boy’s mouth served only to prove that he’d been spending far too much time with the Headmaster. "Dinner it is, then." And before Snape could protest, Potter had pulled what looked like a little bell out of his pocket. A clear note rang softly, once, and a house elf immediately appeared at Potter's side. 

"What would Harry Potter like from Dobby?" The elf looked at Potter with positively adoring eyes. 

"Professor Snape is a bit peckish, Dobby. He missed dinner. Can you bring him something? His favorite, I suppose. And some tea for the both of us, and just a little chocolate, please." Dobby's face shone with happiness as he disappeared to the kitchen to procure their food.

"A house elf at your beck and call, Potter?" Snape cocked an eyebrow.

"Albus gave me the bell while I was here over the summer. Didn't want me wandering out of my rooms. I wasn't even allowed to go down to the library. Nowhere farther than his office." Potter's voice was calm, but there was an undercurrent of something Snape couldn't identify. Potter gave an infinitesimal shrug. "Wasn't the best summer. Not the worst, though, I guess." Dobby reappeared with the food, and while Snape ate, he gave Potter nearly every object in the room not tied down and made the boy identify its magical property. The subject of _Schema_ was never breached, but Harry thought it was a fruitful lesson nonetheless.

 

***

"Clear your mind. Legilimens!"

Snape saw Potter flinch, and then he stopped seeing anything in reality as his mind filled with confusing images. Dumbledore, eyes ablaze, saying something he couldn't hear...the sickening crunch and searing pain of his ribs breaking...hands against Dumbledore's leg, and the deep tuneless hum of _Sanos_ magic...

...all suddenly disappeared as Snape came back to himself to find Potter holding his wand. Harry, his face deadly serious, walked quickly across the room to hand the wand back to the Potions Master. It was their first Occlumency lesson of the term, and Snape was getting the idea that things were a bit different now.

"I'm sorry, Sir. I'll try harder next time. I was...distracted." Snape figured that Potter's distraction didn't hold a candle to his own. He was thoroughly shaken by what he'd seen. As Potter handed him the wand, Snape almost missed the lingering of the boy's fingers. It was just a few seconds, but afterwards, Snape felt measurably calmer. Then he scowled at the boy.

"I would thank you not to do that again, Potter. I don't need your assistance. Legilimens!"

This time, nothing. A blinding grayness that sent him recoiling back into his own mind, to the flash of a murderous looking man...spine pressed into a corner...a cane descending...

...and Potter, lowering him gently to the floor. Potter, hands surprisingly firm on his shoulders, Potter's legs against his back, supporting him. Potter's aura filling him with the warmth of another's genuine concern. Snape twitched in surprise, twisting to look at Potter over his shoulder. The boy gave him a small, sheepish smile.

"I couldn't let you hit your head on the floor. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. This is the part that Albus says I need to work on, now." With his hands in direct contact with the Potions Master, Harry could feel the man's _Schema_ for the first time. He didn't dare investigate, though, as that could not possibly go over well. He’d only barely touched a thread, before, to soothe some of the anxiety that sang between them. Actually looking would probably get him hexed into next month. 

"You saw." The voice was cold, accusing. Green eyes took the measure of black ones. He’d seen already, and Snape knew it. But seeing again didn’t make it easier.

"I saw. I'll never tell. I swear it on my life. You wouldn’t tell my secrets, I’ll never tell yours." Harry looked straight into black eyes that glittered with malice, and, more subtly, with fear. 'I'm not lying to you, Severus Snape. Please believe me. I don't lie to anyone anymore.' For a long moment, they just stared at each other. The Legilimens knew the boy was being honest in that brutal Gryffindor way, and going just as overboard as was usual for the bloody lions, but he had the odd feeling that Harry was being utterly truthful. There was no grandstanding. He really would rather die than tell what he had just seen in Snape's mind.

While Snape was still involved in these thoughts, Harry helped him up off the floor. Snape wavered a moment on his feet before steadying. It felt rather like he had literally been thrown head-first into a brick wall instead of just encountering a strong mental block.

"I think we've had enough for tonight, don't you, Professor?" The boy looked almost wry. It was the first time he'd been able to say those words to Snape after an Occlumency lesson. "Albus didn't warn you at all, did he? That git." There, he definitely looked wry. Snape was tempted to smile weakly despite the pounding between his temples. "Can you make it to your room alright, Professor?" Snape was still swaying on his feet, and was surprised to feel Potter take his arm to steady him. He was tempted to snatch it away, but the boy's touch was surprisingly calming and grounding.

"No, Potter, I think I can make it to my own chambers." As much as he’d meant to yank away, it ended up that Snape gently disengaged his arm from Potter's, immediately missing the contact and scowling at himself for the weakness. _'That boy's magic really is strong. He's got the perfect makings of a_ Sanos _healer, and he does it without even realizing.'_ Shaking his head, Snape started slowly off to his chambers. Harry Potter had somehow managed to become more dangerous, even more so for the aura of calm and trust he seemed to have established around himself. Or that Albus had built around him. 

Harry didn’t move from his spot in the corridor until he was sure that his Potions Master had made it safely into bed. His connection to Snape was unusually strong, considering that he hadn’t even fully explored the other wizard's _Schema_. He considered asking Dumbledore, briefly, before dismissing the idea. _Albus obviously has another plan, here,'_ he thought. _'That man must have as many plots as he does threads. And it probably isn't a good idea to let him know I know this one.'_ Through his experience over the summer, Harry had learned to block some of his thoughts from the older wizard, and his connection to Snape was one he kept safely behind the grey wall. He would figure it out on his own, somehow.


	6. Two of Cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two of cups-friendship renewed, reciprocal affection. reunion or reconciliation following a seperation. bonds of affinity, sympathy, understanding and empathy.  
> i'm aware that this card is traditionally a lovers card. but it doesn't have to be.

After Occlumency, Harry headed up to the Hospital wing to talk to Madam Pomfrey in the bit of time left before curfew. His scheduled Healing lesson had been postponed because a whole group of first year students had come in with some sort of horrible smelling boil curse that left them screaming in pain and unable to be touched. Apparently, it was communicable, because Madam Pomfrey was wearing dragonhide gloves and waved Harry out of the room as soon as he had entered. 

The boil-ridden students were now resting quietly in a row of beds, and Madam Pomfrey had seemingly gone out of her absolutely-no-nonsense emergency mode. 

"Ah, Harry. I'm sorry about earlier, but I think it might be a common problem with our lessons. Student emergencies aren't very respectful of class times." She looked appraisingly over the boy. He was small for his age, maybe scraping five and a half feet tall. His hair was longer, but the length did little to keep it flat. His fingers seemed to have grown impossibly long and gained a good deal of grace. It was a subtle mark of one capable of manipulating the _Schemata_. His whole body, in fact, was different, although probably mostly in carriage. She had heard rumors that he had been at Hogwarts over the summer, but had never seen or heard a peep out of him. Something had happened to him that made him different.

"Um...Madam Pomfrey?" He startled her gently from her observations. Well, that, at least, hadn't changed. Harry was still uncomfortable under a closely appraising eye. Anyone who thought Harry Potter enjoyed attention hadn’t actually met the boy.

"Well you've certainly...matured, Harry. I had heard from Professor Dumbledore that you had learned a lot over the summer, but I must admit I wasn't expecting quite this much change. Nevertheless. Do come sit." She gestured him over to a plain table with two chairs, where they sat. "You're here to learn basic healing methods, as well as more _Sanos_ magic, correct?" Harry nodded. "Professor Dumbledore told me that you already have a fair base in _Sanos_." Harry nodded again. "Could you tell me what you've done?" 

The boy definitely seemed to be preparing himself somehow, as though what he had to say made him nervous. His hair ruffled in a breeze she didn't feel, and when he looked at her, his eyes seemed more vibrant.

"I've mended bones, including the femur, all the long bones of the arm, ribs, and the small bones of the hand and foot. I can repair both superficial and deep skin wounds, repair tendons and ligaments, and knit both muscle tears and deep muscle damage."

"Who were your primary subjects?" 

There was the smallest of flinches. "Albus Dumbledore and myself." 

Madam Pomfrey barely restrained herself from raising an eyebrow. This was disturbing, very disturbing, but she forced herself to go on with the interview. "Do you have any experience with organ damage, brain damage, or blunt trauma wounds?" Harry shook his head. "Very well, later in the year I'll try to arrange several trips to St. Mungo's so that you may have some experience, with a trained _Sanos_ healer, on those kinds of things. They don't usually happen here at Hogwarts, and we don't have a _Sanos_ healer strong enough to guide you through the procedures without allowing you to make any errors. But that will be later. In the meantime, you'll come and assist me with the basic care of patients and we'll go over the theory and history of _Sanos_ healing.” She clapped her hands gently against her thighs. “I think we're done for tonight. Come to your next class as scheduled."

"Thank you, Madam Pomfrey." The healer watched him go with more than a little trepidation. This new Harry Potter would make a great healer, but it seemed that the discovery of his talents had cost him, and the cost was not small. What had Albus done?

Harry raced up to Gryffindor Tower, anxious to finally have the chance to talk to Hermione. He found her bent over her Arithmancy book on a couch by the fire. She had been waiting for him, judging by the way her head shot up when the portrait opened. He sat down beside her, flopping into the overstuffed cushions with a sigh. 

"Oh, Harry! There you are, it’s practically curfew. I was waiting for you." Hermione, in contrast, was all bright eyes and curiosity, tucking her textbook away and turning to face him. 

Harry smiled. “I figured.”

"So...are you going to tell me?" Her curiosity was plainly about to burst out of her eyes. Harry chuckled at her childish excitement, and then sobered.

What Hermione heard was the tame version of his summer experiences, without the pain, the blood, the nightmares, and the isolation. He talked almost exhaustively on _Schema_ , the _Schemata_ , and _Sanos_ healing, spurred on by her questions. He explained what he knew of Voldemort's connection to it all, namely that the Dark Lord had enough experience reading _Schema_ to be a Legilimens, but nothing more. The horrific battle in the graveyard after the Triwizard Tournament had been a visible manifestation of the _Schemata_ , but it had shocked Voldemort, leading Dumbledore to believe that Voldemort was not a _Schemata_ adept, despite his power. Further, Harry was slowly learning that _Sanos_ was a valuable asset, both as a weapon and a tool, as using _Sanos_ without the purest intentions could kill the one it was being used upon. 

Harry had left a lot out of his story, Hermione knew. The way he said things, the pauses to choose words, the spaces he left in his recountings, they all make her sure that his summer had been profoundly difficult. There was still some quiet chatter in the common room, but Harry wasn’t speaking that way. Nothing about him was _casual_ anymore, she realized, none of the thoughtless frankness with which Ron swung through the room. His anger was gone, and a lot of his childishness with it. And he’d gained all this knowledge, all this power, enough that Hermione imagined she could feel it around him, cool and electric. There was something in his eyes, though, a subtle gulf, like he was holding himself at a distance. But then he smiled, and he was so vibrantly _there_ that she could only imagine all of this to be an improvement. Harry had matured, and that had to be for the best, didn’t it? She hugged him fiercely, and was rewarded with a tight embrace in return. 

“I did really miss you guys this summer. It was kind of lonely here by myself. Al--Dumbledore isn’t exactly the most fun company.” He shrugged, favoring her with a self-deprecating smile. “So, did that answer your questions?” 

“About half of them,” Hermione said, and then laughed when Harry raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh, come on, Harry, you just told me about a whole new way of doing magic that isn’t taught in a single class here and never even gets mentioned in _Hogwarts, a History_. What did you expect?” Harry laughed, shaking his head and holding up his hands in self-defense. 

“It’s not taught because adepts are rare. Lots of people can use it a bit, especially Animagi and people who are good at Occlumency or Legilimency. Every time you feel magic, that’s the _Schemata_. But adepts don’t just sort of feel magic, they feel every little thing, every connection between everything, and see and hear it too.” He paused, looking at Hermione like he was waiting for the words to sink in. 

“Oh,” she said after a moment. “ _Oh_. That’s...”

“Kind of terrifying? Yeah.” He shrugged, looking away. “Most adepts aren’t extra powerful or anything, and most of them go into _Soma_ healing.”

Hermione put her hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Most?” 

“Voldemort’s not an adept, though, we don’t think.” He doggedly pressed on, ignoring Hermione’s unphrased question. “So I have that going for me at least.” His shoulder was tense under her hand, and he forced himself to relax. “It’s...okay, I can’t pretend it’s not kind of a big deal. But it’s just another Boy Who Lived thing. It sure does make Potions a lot easier now that I can see what’s going on in the cauldron instead of just guessing, though.” Harry offered a wry smile, and Hermione took it. 

“I’m insanely jealous, you have no idea.” Dangling the possibility of that sort of understanding of magic in front of Hermione without any way for her to achieve it was the worst sort of temptation. “Can you at least show me? Or do something with my _Schema_?” 

Harry leveled Hermione with a thoroughly skeptical look. “That’s...really personal, ‘Mione. You don’t really get to take back somebody looking at how you’re put together.” 

“I don’t have anything to hide from you, Harry.” Hermione looked confused, staring into his face as if his eyes could provide her with answers.

“You should. Really reading someone’s _Schema_ , you know them to their very depths, to their soul, if you believe in souls.” Harry sighed, forcing down his agitation. “I can do something small, though. Here, give me your hand.” She did, just like that. Harry almost wanted to flinch. It was the first time he was touching someone who didn’t understand what he could do, at least in more than the most vague of principles. This almost felt like too much trust. All the same, he let his eyes unfocus, and the threads that stretched between him and Hermione sharpened in his vision. He didn’t let himself look farther in than that. 

In front of Hermione, Harry’s fingers danced over something in the air that she couldn’t see. It almost looked like he was miming stroking the strings of a very complex guitar, or the threads of a narrow loom. “You can’t see it,” he said, and his voice was a little strange, like he was speaking from far away, “but these threads,” his fingers moved, ticking them off, “are the things between you and me. If you really focus, you might be able to sense them.” 

She closed her eyes, and found that maybe Harry was right. Things seemed to be welling up in her memory--little flashes of happy memories, of annoyances, of affection and insecurities and doubts. Harry was humming, a soft note that still seemed to resonate through her chest. She could feel it when he touched on the tiny thread of worry in her, the concern she hadn’t even fully articulated within herself about what happened to Harry, about what her friend had become and whether it was really a good thing. She felt it when he smoothed it away, fading that concern to nothing, to what she had wanted to believe in the first place, that this was good and this changed Harry was better than the bitter, hot-headed boy who had run headlong into more trouble than anyone ought to have survived. This was better. 

He let go of Hermione’s hand. Her eyes opened only sluggishly, and she yawned. "C'mon, sleepy,” he said with a small smile, as though he hadn’t made her tired, “bedtime." Hermione smiled drowsily at him.

"You know, I like this new Harry very much."

"Well thank you, Hermione. Now go to sleep." He got up off the couch and headed towards the boy's dormitory, waiting a few steps out of sight until he knew she had stumbled up the staircase to her bed. Harry got into his own bed with a soft sense of regret. It had been necessary, he was fairly sure of that. Hermione asking too many questions within Dumbledore’s hearing could cause her problems, and everywhere was within Dumbledore’s hearing. He had sent two people to bed, tonight, but there was no one to put him to bed. The rest of his dormmates were already asleep, and Dean and Ron seemed to be having a competition for loudest sleep-snuffling. _'Ah, Potter, Potter,'_ he thought. _Self-pity isn't your thing anymore, remember?'_ He gave a wry half-smile into the darkness. _‘We gave up pity. And for the best. Loneliness isn't so bad, anyway. At least there's progress. Progress is enough.'_


	7. Two of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two of swords- difficult choices must be made, however, no decision resolves the problem. indicision resulting from lack of satisfactory choices.

It was barely light when Poppy Pomfrey left the hospital wing for Albus Dumbledore's office. When she arrived, Albus was sitting at his desk, still in his bathrobe, reading the Daily Prophet with the WWN murmuring in the background.

"Ah, Poppy. Would you like some tea?"

"Thank you, Albus." She settled into the chair as the Headmaster folded his newspaper and conjured her her a cup of tea.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" Albus' eyes twinkled as if he already had an idea.

"I saw Harry yesterday."

"As I'd expect you should have. It was his first healing lesson, was it not?" 

Poppy nodded, but pressed on. "Albus, what happened to him the the summer? More specifically, what in the name of the Gods did you do to him? He said he had _practiced_ on you, Albus. And on himself."

"Over the course of his summer training, there were injuries, Poppy. And you know as well as I that direct experience is required for _Sanos_ training. Incidentally, your idea of taking him to St. Mungos is rather unwise. I would prefer that his _Sanos_ abilities remain something of a secret for as long as possible."

"Of course they require training. And how do you expect him to have it without going to St. Mungos?"

"I'm sure something will work itself out, Poppy." That did not bode well. She tried to bring him back onto her track. 

"He practiced on himself, which also means that you hurt him. Was that really wise, Albus?" Poppy searched his eyes, but they never lost their twinkle. She did get the idea, though, that it was a carefully maintained artifice, and their topic of conversation was deadly serious.

"It was necessary, Poppy." 

"But...to make it this far in three months, you must have...you must have destroyed him."

"One needs fire and hammer to temper steel. And further, I did not destroy him. He did that quite thoroughly himself. He took the first step on the path to rebirth alone, too, Poppy. I've just guided him from there."

"Molded him, you mean." Her eyes flashed with something akin to anger. Then she sobered. "That poor child."

"I think, if you were to ask him, Poppy, that he's satisfied with where he is now."

"Oh, mark me, Albus, I most certainly will." She stood and, without waiting to be dismissed, walked out of the Headmaster's office. Albus stared into her half finished cup of tea, his hands steepled under his nose, deep in thought.

***

Severus Snape made his irritable way to the Headmaster's office after lunch. He had manifold reasons for being annoyed at Albus Dumbledore, and they all seemed to infernally center on Harry Potter. He swooped into the room, not unaware that this effect was lost on Albus, and sat down without being invited, an effect which was not.

"Why didn't you tell me that his Occlumency had progressed so far?" he snapped without preamble. "I have half a mind to hex you into next week!" Dumbledore appraised the annoyed Potions Master, his face an inscrutable mask.

"Did he hurt you?" Dumbledore's voice was soft, and lacked any trace of his usual joviality.

"Yes he hurt me! And he was so damnably apologetic about it afterwards it was sickening! All Gryffindor promises and justice! And you, you codger, you should have warned me!" Snape's voice was rising dangerously.

"Severus, be still." The Potions Master blinked and snapped his mouth shut abruptly. Then the subtly playful tone was back in the Headmaster's voice. "Harry didn't know any better. He's been practicing Occlumency with me. I'm sure he just overestimated the force necessary for blocking you."

"He reversed the spell, Albus. He shut me from his mind and probed into mine instead. And what I saw in his, the first time..."

"What did you see, Severus?" There was that serious tone again. It brought Severus' hackles up.

"Nothing good. As if I would break my word by telling you." At this, Dumbledore sat back in his chair and chuckled.

"Ah, Severus." Snape scowled darkly at him. As far as he was concerned, nothing about this was amusing whatsoever. "Harry and I are bonded through _Sanos_. I assure you, it is most likely that I already know whatever you saw."

"Nonetheless." Severus was now resolute. "I am a man of my word, Albus." But truly, even more than being a man of his word, he had felt the magic that swirled about them as Potter had sworn never to tell anything that he saw in Severus' head. Potter had given him a binding oath, and his sense of honor dictated that he do his best to return the favor, whether or not he actually liked the boy. Especially if Albus was playing them both, and he certainly was. Dumbledore sighed.

"Very well, Severus. Anything else, then?"

"No, Headmaster. But I don't like what's happened here, with Potter. And I'm going to keep watching."

"As you will, Severus." Dumbledore turned his eyes down to his papers, and Severus Snape swept out of the room. His scowl was so deep that Professor Sprout, who was on her way up to the office when Snape stalked past the gargoyle, jumped out of his way.

***

That evening, Harry begged and pleaded the password to the Prefects’ bathroom out of Hermione after convincing her that he really needed a bath and a quiet place to think. Eventually, she agreed, and walked him down to the bathroom. She walked inside with him, and spoke to the mermaid in the picture over the enormous tub.

"He's invited. You hear?" she spoke sternly to the mermaid, who giggled in response. Harry raised his eyebrows at her. "She'll have the house elves come steal your clothes and towel, otherwise. Well, they always take your clothes, but usually to clean them, and then they return them. If you're not invited, they'll just take your things and leave you to somehow get back to your common room starkers."

Harry winced. It was a long way from the Prefects’ bathroom to Gryffindor tower. "Well, thank you then, ‘Mione." He rewarded her with one of his rare smiles, and she beamed in response.

"Don't stay down here forever, Harry. Filch will be out in the corridors after ten." She gave him a quick hug and left so he could get down to his bath. Harry quickly examined the _Schema_ of each of the faucets on the tub, and turned on only the ones he wanted. He undressed, and then slid slowly into a steaming bath smelling of mint and lavender that blurred the parts of his body underwater in an effect similar to clouded glass, and muttered a spell to keep the water from turning tepid. He needed time to enjoy this bath before getting down to what he was really there to do. 

Harry spent some time just floating on his back in the middle of the tub, staring up at ceiling, which was barely visible in the dim. The sensation of being surrounded by warm water, his ears filled with the sound of liquid moving, and steam playing softly over his exposed belly and thighs was incredibly relaxing. He had spent many nights over the summer floating just like this, staring up through the skylight at at the stars. Water seemed to help rid him of his negative thoughts, and helped along the processes of his subconscious. Many conclusions had been drawn somewhere between his tub and the stars, and it was in fact in the tub that he had ultimately come to peace with who he was, what he was, and why he must let himself be shaped into the tool that he was becoming. It had only been four days, but Harry missed his tub. He missed his rooms, really. In the dorms, he could feel the shift and grate of old and new all the time, how he didn’t quite fit in the place he used to most belong. He decided to start looking for a back passage to the corridor behind Dumbledore's offices.

With his mind sufficiently calmed, Harry settled on the bench that was part of the wall of the tub, and focused on his own _Schema_. All the threads that connected from Harry to other people and objects came into focus first, and then the tight knot that was Harry's vision of his _Schema_ emerged. In Harry's vision, people's _Schema_ looked like knots, but those knots could be zoomed in on, looked at very closely, and revealed themselves to be more like three-dimensional spiderwebs, with strands overlapping and interlocking in all directions within itself, and strands shooting out to other people and things. When he touched people to read their _Schema_ , what he felt was that web. The translation between vision and touch and just touch was one he couldn't explain, but could only execute. Much of _Schema_ and _Schemata_ reading was innate within the reader, he had learned. Dumbledore didn’t see things the same way he did, even.

Harry zeroed in on the thread that tied him to Ron Weasley. Specifically, he wanted to look at the accompanying threads, which would show him how Ron was tied to him, and how Ron felt about him. What he saw boded ill. Ron’s threads were a sickly jealous yellow, twined with the brighter poisonous yellow of anger. He came upon a complicated little snag that took him long minutes to decipher, because it wasn’t just between the two of them. Ron was jealous that Hermione was being oddly warm towards Harry. He made a short snort of mirthless laughter. Oh, if only Ron knew. The ridiculousness of it all. But Harry knew from long experience that Ron was rarely immediately unresponsive to attempts to to explain things to him. The only thing Harry could do was wait, to let Ron’s cleverness overtake his temper.

Harry sighed and sank down to the bottom of the pool. Laying on the marble bottom, he stared up through the cloudy water, watching bubbles of air slowly escape his lips and burst at the surface. It was so very calm and quiet under the water. He could hold his breath for a surprisingly long time now, especially if he was just being still. When his lungs began to burn, he pressed his palms into the bottom of the tub and pushed up, propelling his body to the surface. Stepping carefully out of the tub, Harry put on his glasses and went and looked at himself in one of the full length mirrors, which were charmed to keep the steam of the bathroom from condensing on them. Over the summer, Harry had put several charms on his glasses to keep them from breaking, getting wet, or fogging up.

Even soaking wet, his hair tried to stick out oddly. He ran his fingers through it, feeling the tingle he was finally getting used to when his fingers brushed his scar. Somewhere along the way, probably in no small part from Dumbledore’s training, he'd gone from being simply skinny to being a construction of muscle and sinew. The physics of every movement was visible under his skin, which was graced with several new scars from his summer experiences. He didn't mind the scars. They were reminders of lessons learned, and each one hummed with its own sort of subtle power. He had lost his slouch, and his shoulders were straight now, as was his spine. It was too much to ask for, to have an imposing physical presence, but learning to stand down Albus Dumbledore had been a help. Harry hadn't grown at all over the summer, despite his frequently ravenous eating habits, and his full height wasn’t particularly considerable. But it would do. He turned from his reflection, picked up the fluffy towel that had been left for him, and quickly dried himself. redressed, and headed back to Gryffindor tower.

What worried him now were the things beyond his skin.


	8. Prince of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prince of swords-disciplining emotions, meditative practices that strengthen mind and body. quiet before a storm, forging a sword that is a resourceful tool as well as a destructive weapon.

Hogwarts settled back into its school rhythm. The Gryffindor trio was slowly splitting into two pairs, with Hermione, as always, in the middle. It seemed that every year, something divided Harry and Ron, leaving Hermione to attempt to bridge their gap, or at least maintain both of her friendships. Hermione and Harry tended to study together in the evenings, taking occasional breaks for conversation. Hermione was positively fascinated with the new magic that Harry was learning, and wanted to know everything he did about it. Harry shared just enough to curb the worst of her curiousity.

During the second week of classes, Ron had summoned his courage and asked Hermione to be his girlfriend, and she had happily accepted. Harry was pleased that his friends had finally gotten together, even if Ron did seem to be using his new position as 'boyfriend' to keep Hermione from spending time alone with Harry. He did his best to demand her complete attention at mealtimes, and begged for help on his homework in Charms and DADA, the only two classes that they shared. Ron made pointed displays of his affection for Hermione, holding her hand in the corridors as they walked to class, randomly stopping to snog in the halls, or interrupting Harry and Hermione's conversations by coming over and wrapping his arm around her. Harry just let it happen, leaving the new couple to their privacy whenever Ron pressed for it. Hermione occasionally seemed embarrassed, but there was still a little thrill in her at Ron’s possessiveness, how it made her feel wanted. 

Harry, though, knew where he wasn’t wanted. He had taken to wandering the halls at all hours. Sometimes, for his own wry humor, he would stalk around the castle behind Snape, wrapped in his invisibility cloak with his footsteps muffled in a silencing spell. Snape had a good wandering route that traveled most of the frequently used areas of Hogwarts. Sometimes he was sure that Snape would notice him. It seemed that the man could smell him or something, and Harry had more than a few close calls when Snape spun suddenly around, sniffing the air and peering intently into the darkness. Sometimes Harry's presence seemed to make him nervous, other times they skulked the halls in perfect tandem, Harry's shorter legs somehow covering Snape's impossibly long stride. He imagined that it would probably be a very amusing scene, if one could see through invisibility cloaks, to watch the Potions Master swooping around a corner, only to be followed in precisely two steps by Harry Potter. Even though Harry had gotten over the amusement of following the Potions professor, he still wandered his route often. He was following that route now, as he mulled over the excitement of the evening.

Harry and Hermione had been going over their Potions assignments, making sure that neither of them had missed any of the important parts of one of Snape's now-infamous one meter essays on the uses of a potion, the active properties of each of the ingredients, and how the ingredients of a potion reacted together to produce the potion's ultimate effect. Harry had just made a quip about writing something sarcastic in six inch high letters down the length of the parchment and handing that in instead when Ron interrupted them.

"Harry, we need to talk." Ron's face was set in hard lines, and there was something in his eyes Harry really didn't like. Harry waved Hermione off with a little shrug, trying to reassure her with his eyes that he could handle Ron and that everything would be fine. She nodded, gathered their things and moved to the other side of the Common Room. Harry motioned to Ron to sit, but he remained standing, looming over Harry, who was much shorter to begin with. Ron had shot up over the summer, and broadened out, too. He was looking more like Charlie than Percy anymore. Harry steeled himself and waited. 

"What's happened to you, Harry?" Ron's voice was somewhere between accusatory and concerned. "You either spend all your time studying, or with that git Snape..." 

"I have a class with him," Harry interrupted. “And he’s not always a complete git.” 

Ron began turning red, and Harry dropped his eyes. "He's a git, Harry! Since when do you defend Snape? Since when do you not play pranks in Charms? You haven't done a single thing against the rules since the term started, and you're turning into a bloody Ravenclaw!" Ron was ranting now. "And you're so bloody quiet! Still a whiz at Quidditch, of course, but you're not like you were before anymore, Harry. Bloody extra classes that no one else takes, and Oc--remedial lessons you don't mind going to! And since when do you call Professor Dumbledore Albus?"  
Harry's head jerked up. 

"You..." Ron seemed to lose some of his steam, "you called him that in a dream." 

Harry's features tightened slightly, and he swallowed, forcing himself to untense. "I've been trying to tell you..."

"Like bloody hell you have! All this Schwhatis and Schwhosis, and _Healing_ , since when do you care about that," Ron sneered, his voice rapidly rising in volume, "and staying at Hogwarts over the summer instead of coming to the Burrow to visit and now spending all this time with _my_ girlfriend!" Harry sighed wearily.

"I'm not trying to steal..."

"The bloody hell you're not!" Ron's voice had elevated to full roar. 

Harry stood, tired of the yelling, angry that this was happening in the middle of the common room, and rather sure that yelling back wasn't going to make Ron see reason. Harry had the sudden impulse to change Ron's _Schema_. All it would take was a moment, just a slight tweak of the threads, and Ron was looming so close that the touch would have been barely noticeable...

 _'Harry James Potter!'_ The voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Hermione at her most righteous red hid him from the temptation. 'He’s your friend! Or was, at least. You have no right to do that to any human being!'  
 _'I'm not so sure about that anymore,'_ Harry-voice answered Hermione-voice. He had done it to her, after all, although that had been more for her own protection. Ron hating him didn’t make anyone unsafe. Wanting his friend back was pure selfishness.  
 _'He'll come around on his own. Or he won't. But that choice isn't yours, and you know it.'_ Harry voice could only sigh in agreement with Hermione-voice's logic, and his temper faded. He wasn’t any better than--well, he wasn’t any better than anybody if he didn’t let people have their choices. Back in control of his impulses, Harry sighed and looked Ron in the eye, summoning all of his powers of non-Schematic persuasion for one final try.

"No, Ron, I'm not. She was _our_ friend before she was your girlfriend, and I have absolutely no desire to steal her from you." Harry wanted to shake his head at the very thought. Ron's jealousy was an entirely moot point, but Harry decided that particular conversation was probably best saved for another day. "You haven't even tried to listen to what I've tried to tell you about what happened this summer, and I'm tired of being berated for being myself. It’s gotten really, really old." He shouldered past the larger boy. "I'm going to bed."

But Harry did not go to bed. He was agitated and restless, and sleep was far from him. He hoped that a few hours of Snape-like stalking would settle his mind enough so that he could sleep. Harry wrapped himself in his invisibility cloak, closed his bedcurtains, applied a silencing charm to his shoes, and left Gryffindor tower to wander the corridors. And somehow, somewhere along the way, he had left Snape’s habitual route and ended up in a corridor he didn't recognize. Or rather, it looked like approximately five hundred other Hogwarts corridors. Harry shrugged and kept walking down it, figuring he'd come to someplace familiar eventually. He was stopped by two familiar voices.

"Man-sssnake, where isss you? We can sssmell you." Harry jumped, shocked to hear the familiar Parseltongue.

"Dubhe and Phecda?"

"Over heresss, man-sssnake." Harry looked over at the wall and saw the familiar door to his summer rooms, guarded by the intertwined snakes. He dropped the hood of his invisibility cloak and ran his fingers gently over the two snakes. They untwined from their position on the door and wrapped around his wrist and up his hand.

"Ahh, there you isss. Why were you being invisssable?" Harry stroked the graceful heads of his door guardians, holding them close to his face and breathing his warmth onto them. They hissed with pleasure, gently squeezing his fingers. 

"Sssometimesss, it isss good to be alone." The snakes rubbed Harry's nose and cheek. This little affection made him feel better. The two snakes had kept him company through many long nights, wrapped around his hands and arms, or curled in his hair.

"We underssstand, Harry Potter. Would you like to come back into your roomsss?"

"Very much. Thanksss." The two snakes slid back into their post, and the door opened slowly.

"You isss alwaysss welcome, man-sssnake. If you wantsss our company, just asssk."

Being back in his summer rooms was like letting out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Up here, the feeling of all the other people in the castle was dim, and the suite signaled safety to him. His summer training had always taken place outside these walls, so his rooms had become his place for privacy and recovery. Just walking in and sitting on his sofa, he felt calmer. Harry reached into his pocket and rang the little bell. Dobby dutifully appeared at his side.

"What can Dobby get Harry Potter?" Harry smiled, grateful suddenly for this ritual.

"I'd like my teapot and some tea, some nightclothes from my room, and my Potions, Transfiguration, and _Schema/Schemata_ books, along with my bookbag and everything in it. If you could also make sure that the bathroom is properly stocked, I'd be grateful." Dobby skittered off to accomplish his tasks, and Harry leaned back into the sofa, waving his hand lazily to start the fire. In the privacy of this room, he could actually utilize his wandless magic, which he felt was a luxury in itself.

Several hours later, when his Potions essay was complete, his Transfiguration reading accomplished, and his _Schemata_ exercises practiced, Harry fell into a deep, easy sleep in the only bedroom he had really come to think of as his own.


	9. Ten of Staves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ten of staves-responsibilities and obligations can be oppressive and stressful. distinctions between exploiting and being exploited need to be examined. slavery and/or servitude to society, family, or work.

Harry opened the door to the Headmaster's office with a little trepidation. Albus had sent him an owl at breakfast, summoning him directly after the meal. He was completely unsure what to expect, although knowing Albus, it would be something tricky. He was greeted by the smiling face of the Headmaster and the unsmiling face of Severus Snape. _'Well,'_ he thought, _'at least things are in order that way. If Snape was smiling, then it would be time to worry.'_ He felt quite sure that the quirk of Albus' mouth was entirely due to his thought processes, which resonated down their threads when they were this close. Harry sat down without being invited, folded his hands in his lap, and waited. He had decided some time back that he preferred facing the Headmaster with exaggeratedly good posture. It reminded him to never relax.

"Good morning, Harry." Albus' eyes had the twinkle that meant he was most definitely about to spring some news that may or may not be pleasing. "I've managed to wheedle out of Severus that you've been improving greatly in your Potions work. I think it would be fruitful, due to our _Sanos_ bonding, if you helped him prepare my Protection potion. I believe it's brewed twice a week, correct, Severus?" Snape nodded curtly, not exactly pleased with the arrangement. However, he noted, it could be far worse. Potter was at least becoming a competent student. Albus had confirmed his theory that all of Potter's marks had risen dramatically due to his adeptness with _Schemata_ , which corresponded with the sudden development of scholarly habits. "Lovely, then. You will report to Professor Snape's office in your free period between Charms and Potions on Tuesdays and Fridays."

"You realize, Sir, that you've cut out almost all my free time." Harry said. It wasn't really a question. Of course Albus knew. 

"Yes, Harry. But I think you're more than ready for the challenge. And further, an addition of our bond protection to the potion has become essential; there have been attempted attacks on my person." Harry digested this information silently, his expression unchanging but his fingers clenching in his lap. Snape was secretly impressed at Harry's handling of Albus' demand without a show of temper, because he himself would have rather liked to throw a small tantrum. It wasn’t just Potter losing his precious free time. 

"Fine.” He paused, took a breath. “In return, I want my rooms open to me, and with easy access from Gryffindor Tower, a connection to the library, full access to the Restricted Section, and a small workroom." Harry rattled off the list as though he’d practiced it many times, saving it for just such an occasion. Dumbledore nodded sagely.

"As you wish, Harry. I'll cajole the castle immediately." Snape looked from old wizard to young wizard, trying to hide his shock that Albus had bent so easily to the boy's demands, not to mention the fact that it was possible to cajole the castle into anything.

"Is there anything else, Professor?" Harry’s face was calm and his voice stayed steady, but his hair fluttered in a breeze that wasn’t there before it went still. Dumbledore shook his head. Snape was still too dumbfounded to move without revealing his confusion. "Well, then, I'll see you tonight, Professor Snape. Professor Dumbledore," He inclined his head to the Headmaster and left the office without being dismissed. 

Albus patted Snape's hand, which was clawed over the arm of his chair. Leaning over conspiratorially, he chuckled. "Trust me, Severus; I got the better end of the deal."

"Rooms, Sir?" Snape said, finding his voice.

"Where I kept him over the summer. He rediscovered them last week, but they're rather, shall we say, out of the way. Over the summer, Harry realized that the castle can choose to ignore the blunter laws of physics and connect places that are far from each other, or even have rooms that theoretically would overlap. Had I let him explore more, he might have found the teachers' passageways, which would have been quite a shame." Dumbledore's expression suggested that it wouldn't really have been much of a shame at all. 

Severus snorted, but it didn’t quite hide his bitterness. "You give in easily to him." 

Dumbledore sobered. "Ah, not at all, Severus, not at all." He took a sherbet lemon from the bowl on his desk and placed it delicately on his tongue. "And you, I believe, should be working on getting down to your dungeon full of first years." Severus bowed slightly to the Headmaster, and made his departure in a cloud of billowing robes. 

Fawkes hopped off his perch and settled on Albus' shoulder. "Well, that went well, didn't it, Fawkes? It was certainly amusing, at very least." The bird crooned his agreement, leaning his head down to be stroked.

***

It was the second Gryffindor versus Slytherin match of the Quidditch season, and the game was alarmingly close. Gryffindor's undefeated Quidditch status was on the line. Harry and Draco were both flying high above the game, searching for the tiny flash of gold that would indicate the Snitch, and trying to avoid the zooming Bludgers. They circled in opposite figure eights, passing each other occasionally. Harry didn't bother to respond to Draco's sneers. In fact, he barely even saw them. All his powers of concentration were reserved only for the Snitch. 

Another pleasant side effect of Harry's training was that his flying had improved, as had his talent for finding the Snitch. He never actually looked for threads while he was playing, though. It was tantamount to cheating. His ability to concentrate and his hard-won patience, however, were assets he could and did use. 

Suddenly, Draco plunged into a dive. Harry paused for half a second, making sure that Malfoy wasn't faking, before he dove too. The Snitch abruptly shot up and between both the boys, and they zoomed after it. They raced over the pitch broom to broom, green robes tangled in red ones, flashes of silver blond speeding by next to flashes of ebony. Two gloved hands reached, but the snitch thwarted both as it changed direction yet again. 

The crowd was totally devoted to their race for the Snitch. So devoted, in fact, that no one was watching as a Bludger flew out of seemingly nowhere and smashed directly into the head of one of the Slytherin chasers. She fell without a sound, and it was only at the distinct thump of body meeting grass that anyone realized what happened. 

Harry heard the thud, and glanced at the girl as he and Malfoy raced by. She was hurt badly, but that was all he could tell as he shot by her. Dark robes were racing across the field towards the fallen Slytherin. The snitch flew ahead of him, just out of his reach. Looking down, he could see blood. Looking to the side, he saw Malfoy, unaware of his teammate's injury or the division of Harry’s attention, aware only of the Golden Snitch. Somewhere behind him, the Gryffindor team was expecting him to lead them to victory. Which would it be? Blood, rivalry, or victory? Harry made a midair decision.

He jerked hard to the side and dove for the ground, abandoning the fight for the snitch, abandoning Draco Malfoy, and abandoning his team. The latter stung, but the girl's life was more important. Harry didn't even know her, only that he could and should help. _'I have a duty to help her. More than my duty as a Seeker, more than my duty to my house. If she dies...'_ He didn't bother to finish the thought. He touched down and ran to the periphery of the crowd that had gathered around the fallen girl.

"Excuse me! Let me through!" Harry tried to elbow his way to the girl, but the crowd wasn't moving for him. 

"MOVE!" The voice that came from Harry Potter's mouth was not his own. His hair flew wildly around his head, Quidditch robes billowing in a wind that didn't exist, his eyes positively glowing with their own inner light. Something in him seemed to darken and lighten at the same time, deepening his shadows while making his skin glow. The people around him parted, dumbstruck and a little afraid.

Then he was just Harry Potter again, just a disheveled Gryffindor Seeker. He ran to the fallen girl, dropping to his knees at her head. He placed his hands gently on the sides of her skull, slipping into the focus necessary for _Schematic_ sight, and assessed the damage. The area around her right temple was caved slightly in, the gash in her forehead bled profusely, her face was pale as parchment, and her breath was shallow. "Get away from her," he ordered without looking up from the girl, whose eyes opened and rolled glassily up to look at him. He wasn't sure that she was actually seeing him, just feeling him there, feeling his energy flowing through her. "All of you, stop touching her right now. Get away. Madam Pomfrey, please get them away." Poppy Pomfrey took one look at Harry and, knowing what he was about to do, ordered everyone else to back away. She looked penetratingly up at the Headmaster, and caught that Snape was bestowing him with a similar glare. The Potions Master had elbowed his way through the panicked crowds in the stands and on the pitch to get to them. They were the only three who remained close to Harry and the fallen girl. 

“Her name is Kathryn Brownwing,” Snape said, and Harry nodded without looking up. It helped for a _Sanos_ healer to know something of their patient, but there wasn’t really time. The Headmaster cast a silencing spell and a distraction ward around them. The middle of a Quidditch pitch was an unfortunately public place for Potter to be doing this sort of magic. 

Harry began humming the deep tuneless note of _Sanos_. Holding his hands close over her broken skull, he plunged into her, his energy flowing through her entire body, searching and comforting. The girl was somewhat conscious, but entirely incoherent. Harry sang through her _Schema_ , stroking threads and tweaking threads until she calmed, stopped fighting him and accepted his presence. Only then could he begin to actually heal her. 

As they watched, the sunken place in the girl's skull curved back into its proper shape. Her breathing became deeper and clearer, and the skin of her temple closed and healed.

The tricky part was up in her brain, where the impact had damaged it. Repairing the skull itself had been easy, but repairing the brain was hard, and Harry had never done it before, so he had no idea of what to expect, or even what to look for. His body broke out in a sweat, but the _Sanos_ note remained steady. He explored the whole area carefully, comparing healthy tissue to damaged. Most of her brain didn't appear to be damaged, but there seemed to be a barrier of some sort in one area that his magic just couldn't touch. That one thing appeared to control two functions, and he could only repair one. They were tied together, but he was having trouble recognizing what exactly they were. One seemed magical, the other seemed physical, and both were tied to her right ear. He had to choose, and he didn't know what he was choosing. Harry was baffled. It didn't seem right, that she should have to lose one thing or the other, and that the choice would be made by a total stranger. He struggled to come slightly out of his deep trance. 

Harry's dreamy voice came to Albus, Severus and Poppy as if from far away. "I don't know what to do. Help me." 

Madam Pomfrey startled. She had seen this before, and understood the question that Harry had not voiced. Which one to keep? But she had never been forced to choose. Albus remained silent. She took a deep breath. 

Snape spoke first. His voice was dulcet as he bent close to Harry's head, speaking directly into his ear without touching the boy." What do you see?"

"Connection--right ear. Something magic, something physical. Threads purple, green, red. Connected--bit down--mouth--also--left ear." The boy's voice was still dreamy and even, but his eyes were squinched shut, and sweat dripped down his face.

"No frustration, Mr. Potter. We will fix this." Snape looked up at Madam Pomfrey, who came and knelt at Harry's other side. If Harry couldn’t be kept calm, his magic could wreak far more havoc than he had just fixed. 

"Now, Harry, where's the break? What doesn't fit?" She also spoke calmly into his ear, her voice carefully modulated to conceal her fear. Albus simply looked on, his eyes blue as the sky and infinitely calculating.

"Red thread broken--both sides. Wall. Can't weave the break both ways. Threads darkening. Help me now."

"What do the threads show you?" Snape's voice again. 

Harry's eyes squinched further, his brow furrowing, and then his whole face relaxed. When he spoke, his words were more coherent. "Between ear and mouth--that's the break. Magic between ear and mouth. Language--magic? Spell speaking?" His brow tensed again, then relaxed. They felt the ripple of his enforced calm as he fought his emotions down. "Spell speaking?"

"And the physical?" Snape prompted him.

"All twists within itself--to brain--not mouth. Strong to left ear, combine..." He trailed off, swaying with his efforts. Severus and Poppy each experienced a moment of panic, terrified to touch the boy and also terrified that he would fall, severing the connection and possibly killing the girl. "Hearing?" he guessed softly. Severus and Poppy exchanged a look. They could only hope that the boy was right. 

"Harry, you're telling us that the connection is between the physical hearing in her right ear and her ability to cast spells?" Madam Pomfrey prompted.

"I think--hard to tell. I don't understand--too many knots." His face was squinching up again, a muscle working in his jaw, and he was getting whiter and whiter. Severus and Poppy feared his collapse more with every passing moment, but the decision they were making would affect the rest of Kathryn Brownwing's life. 

"Harry." Snape's voice was shockingly gentle. This was one of his students, a girl from an old wizarding family. Either loss would leave her devastated, but were she unable to speak spells anymore, she would be a disgrace to her entire family. "Make the connection for spell speaking." He closed his eyes, pinching his nose. Poppy Pomfrey was holding herself steady in the way that meant she wanted nothing more than a comfortable chair and a cuppa. They could both feel the pull of the magic Harry was gathering to himself to finish the repair. 

"Right then." A few moments more, and the hum stopped. He opened his eyes and looked at each of them in turn: Poppy Pomfrey, Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore. His eyes were glassy, filled with pain. His voice was faint and his skin so pale that his veins stood out blue-black. He swayed slightly.

"There you have it, folks. Harry Potter saves the girl but loses the Snitch." With a gentle smile at his own uncharacteristic sarcasm, he collapsed gently onto the grass. Dubmledore let his wards drop, and Draco Malfoy walked up to the distracted referee and handed her the Snitch, all joy of beating Potter absolutely lost. 

***

Ron Weasley was positively furious. Harry had thrown the game to go play hero to a Slytherin, of all things. Or at least that was the rumor, since nobody had been able to see anything through the wards. And then, in true hero style, he'd been rushed to the Hospital wing, where no one was being admitted. Madam Pomfrey had actually been the closest he'd ever seen to angry when he demanded entrance. All Ron could see through the door was Harry lying in bed, his head lolling to the side, the Slytherin girl in the next bed, and Dumbledore sitting between them, talking softly to Harry. Hermione was positively frantic with worry, which annoyed him even more. The way Harry had crumpled on the Quidditch pitch and had to be carried off to the Hospital wing looking even worse than the girl who had fallen terrified her. Harry was always the one who got all the attention. Dumbledore allowed him bizarre familiarity, and even that git Snape, who hated Harry, had run to him when he went to play hero. Nevermind that it was one of his students, Hermione tried to explain to him what had probably happened behind the ward, but Ron wasn't hearing it. He didn't care about _Sanos_ , or what a 'gift' Harry had. He didn't want to hear her talk about him at all. Gryffindor had lost the match, and it was entirely Harry's fault. The rest of the house seemed to be divided between being depressed and assuming that whatever Harry’d done with the Slytherin girl, it must have been heroic.

Harry returned right before curfew, pale and with bruise-dark circles under his eyes. He looked a little better, but not much. His face was pinched around the eyes and mouth. Hermione's hug nearly bowled him over, but the smile he bestowed on her and the way he patted her cheek nearly gave Ron an aneurysm. He ran over and yanked her away from him, utterly unbelieving that they would put on such a display right in front of him. Hermione looked at him furiously, her hands on her hips.

"Ron..." Harry tried. He was swaying on his feet. Hermione made to take his arm and steady him, but Ron pushed her hand away.

"Oh, there's no need, Harry Potter. Absolutely none," Ron snapped. "I'll thank you not to paw my girlfriend, you bloody git!"

"But Ron, it's..." Harry tried again, only to be thwarted again.

"I told you, Potter, I don't want to hear it." Ron dragged Hermione away from Harry, who was too exhausted to do anything except stand there defeated for a moment, and walk slowly up to bed.

"Ronald Weasley, how could you?" Hermione screeched at him. Ron's face somehow managed to get even more purple.

"He threw the game and ruined our undefeated record for some Slytherin chit!" Ron wanted so badly for her to understand. "He could have just lost us the House Cup, Hermione. All for the sake of showing off how special he is!"

"He wasn't showing off! She might've died! And maybe there are more important things than the House Cup, Ron!" Hermione stormed away from him and up to the girl's dormitory, where she knew he couldn't follow her. Ron flopped onto a couch, nursing a flame of anger that wouldn't extinguish. Harry always got everything, and now Harry had gotten Hermione mad at him.


	10. The Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the tower-unexpected, total, sudden change; a sudden event that destroys one's foundations. catastrophic events; events that the individual has no control over except in how he will respond to them.
> 
>  
> 
> **this chapter contains the potentially triggering content in the fic warnings, those being graphic violence and rape. please read with that in mind.**

After the Quidditch Incident, as Harry came to think of it, the next several weeks were surprisingly quiet. Hallowe'en was coming up in a bit more than a fortnight, and the students were already looking forward to the feast. No one dared chat about the upcoming holiday in Professor Snape's class, though.

Harry was actually beginning to enjoy Potions. He was starting to see the same things in it that made Hermione, and, though he didn't know it, Snape himself, love the subject so much. It was exacting, but perfectible. Order had come to soothe Harry, and the steady regularity that was required from potions became pleasant instead of an impossible challenge. And without Ron to distract him and Snape targeting him, much easier. Even though he did his partnered potions with Hermione, they both knew that he was holding his own in the subject now, actually working alongside her instead of letting her carry them both. If nothing else, his work on Dumbledore's twice-weekly Protection Potions proved that. With Harry's infusion of protective magic, the potions had become far more powerful. Even Snape seemed impressed, meaning that he bestowed the extraordinary praise "Good work, Mr. Potter," when he and Harry had finished brewing the potion for the first time. No house points, but Harry wasn’t expecting miracles.

They had come to the end of another class, and Harry was packing up his supplies when he noticed a strange little stone on his desk. 

"Hey, Mione, where did this..." His fingers closed around the stone, and felt the familiar sickening lurch just behind his navel that signaled a Portkey activating. Arriving, he had brief flash of tapestries and empty air beneath his feet before he was tumbling down a long flight of curved, stone stairs. His head cracked against a stair, then against the wall. Helpless to stop himself, he careened off of the walls, the sharp edges of the treads and ornately carved rails bruising and battering him all the way down. 

A lone man at the bottom of the stair, obviously waiting, tsk'd in mock exasperation as the young man rushed to meet him. "So impatient, you are, my boy," he said softly. He stared at the still, crumpled body on the flagstones at his feet and bending down, felt for a pulse in the lax, outstretched throat. He hissed a sharp sound of relief when he felt a strong, regular throb under his long pale fingers, his lips curling into an evil parody of a smile. His Master would have been most upset if this little play-time killed the Boy Who Lived. "Welcome to my humble abode, Mr. Potter. So good of you to join us."

He motioned to the two men standing respectfully back from the scene. In silence, they gathered the boy up and carried his dead weight to the cold chamber reserved for his visit.

***

Professor Snape knew by the sudden silence that something was terribly wrong. He looked up irritably from the papers he was grading. The class seemed stunned into silence, and Hermione Granger looked positively terrified. 

"What just happened here? And where is Mr. Potter?" Granger broke into an abrupt sob, but immediately began the process of composing herself. She wasn't sure if anyone else had seen Harry vanish, and it was important to start looking as quickly as they could.

"Harry just--just disappeared." Tears flowed down her face, but Snape could see that her mind was working again. "I think--a Portkey. He was asking me what something was, and then he was gone."

Snape was seized by a panic that didn't reach his face. The rest of the class seemed to have no trouble expressing a similar panic. Students were milling about, talking hysterically. Even the Slytherins looked shocked. It didn’t do much to convince Snape that whatever had happened moments ago wasn’t the work of one of them. His eyes flitted over his students. Malfoy, Parkinson, Nott. Who was responsible?

"Silence!" he thundered. "Class dismissed. You are all to go straight back to your respective Houses. Anyone caught roaming the hallways will be severely punished. Miss Granger, you will come with me." Severus stalked out of the room before the students had a chance to move, Hermione in his wake.

Hermione surmised, correctly, that they were heading to the Headmaster's office. She furiously wiped the tears from her face, willing no more to fall. She needed to be together for this. Harry needed them. 

***

" _Enervate!_ " Harry heard the command echo in his exploding head as the spell tore through him, waking every nerve into a white hot agony. He struggled to sit up, only to find himself bound, face up, on something hard and so cold it leached the heat out of him. He tried to turn his head to see where he was, but quickly closed his eyes against the wave of nausea that brought bile to his throat. Concussion, then. 

"Ah, so glad to see you with us, Mr. Potter." Lucius Malfroy was bending over him, his face obscured by a mask but his long white hair brushing Harry's chest. Someone had taken all his clothes. "I trust you enjoyed your rest?" He turned to the woman at his side, "Bella, my darling, Mr. Potter seems to have learned some wandless magic over the summer." His hand swept to the side where one of the two men who had brought him in lay crumpled on the floor from a _Stupify_ curse. "Could you please see to it he doesn't do so again?" A wave of hate and fear rose in Harry, but with them nearly came the contents of his stomach. He fought to swallow it all down. 

Bellatrix purred deep in her throat. "My pleasure." From the sleeve of her gown she brought out a slender dagger. Harry's eyes widened at the sight and he waved his fingers, trying to push her away with another spell. She laughed heartily as the spell bounced harmlessly away as though it had hit an impenetrable barrier. "Oh, my little boy, you are going to have to do better than that." She laid her hand on his, holding the fingers flat on the stone and with slow precision, drew the blade ever so slowly, but deeply, across the back of his hands right below the knuckles. Harry screamed. Bump, bump, bump the little knife dragged across the bone, scoring it as she lovingly cut the tendons to his fingers. When she'd finished with this wand hand, she slowly made her way to the other side of him, doing the same to the other hand. 

Harry arched against the bonds holding him, desperate to escape the searing in his hands. From far away, he could hear himself screaming, could feel the rawness of his throat. He felt something soft but solid on them and looked down, saw her licking some of the blood off of his hand, her fingers making sure in the wound that her work was well done. His scream subsided to a sob, shuddering and gasping. His hands were nothing but fire and pain, useless. She raised blood covered hands to his face, caressing his cheek and bending down, kissed him softly on the mouth, her tongue smearing his blood on his lips. "Such a tender morsel," she murmured, biting his lip. Looking up at the amused man standing there watching her, his arms folded, she chuckled saying, "Tonight, we feast."

"Yes, my darling, we will, but it seems to me that if Mr. Potter has learned wandless magic, we need to make doubly sure he cannot do so anymore."

The first vicious contact of the swinging cane raged through Harry, stealing his air as agony spiraled out from his crushed fingers through him until his whole body contorted to escape, straining against the tight bonds holding him fast. There wasn’t even air to scream. He closed his eyes as the silver head descended once more; he knew it would not be the last.

***

Dumbledore was waiting for them. "Severus, what just happened?" The Headmaster looked more agitated than Hermione had ever seen him. He was pacing around his office, his long crooked fingers knotting and unknotting. There wasn't even a hint of a twinkle in his piercingly blue eyes.

"Harry Potter abruptly and mysteriously disappeared from my Potions classroom, Sir. Miss Granger believes that he was Portkeyed."

"Harry is no longer on Hogwarts grounds." Dumbledore's voice was very grave.

"Well, he's used _Sanos_ on you before! Can't you locate him?" Severus snapped. Potter had disappeared in his class, under his watch, and probably because some foolish Death Eater thought that he might sit on the news. He was overwhelmed with guilt at failing Albus, and for failing Potter as well. Dumbledore shook his head.

"He's out of range.” Severus wasn’t sure whether to be frustrated or relieved. Hand-placing _Sanos_ , the type commonly used for healing moderate damage, created a bond of only moderate strength; it allowed only a superficial sharing of minds. Repeated use between the same two wizards reinforced that bond, but it was still mild, as bonds went. The other kind of _Sanos_ , once used twice between the same two people, created a much more complete bond, and was only used in extreme cases. Severus wasn’t sure he would have entirely put it past the Headmaster, though. “Harry and I have a hand-placing bond. I can only feel him at close distance, probably about a mile."

"So he could be anywhere." It wasn’t a question. Hopes for Harry's quick rescue were slipping away. 

Dumbledore nodded again. "And it is imperative that we find him as soon as possible. Where do we start?"

Snape walked over to the window, staring unseeingly. For long moments he was lost in thought. "The Lestranges. Or Lucius. Perhaps they got carried away." he said, almost as if to himself. "The bumbling Ministry has no idea as to their location.” His mouth pressed into an even thinner line. “You had best find Harry soon, Headmaster." It completely escaped Snape that he had called Harry by his given name as he spit the words, trying to cover his own fear. Their precious savior was probably in the hands of a sadistic madwoman and her cohort. Dumbledore looked down at Hermione, who had collapsed into a chair and was listening, dry eyed and trembling.

"Miss Granger," he said kindly, "go to Madam Pomfrey and get a Calming Draught, and then go immediately back to Gryffindor Tower. I am sending a message to Minerva to cancel all classes and bring all students back to their respective Houses." She nodded dumbly and made to leave. On the threshold, she turned.

"You'll save him, won't you, Professor Snape? He trusts you, you know." Snape was too shocked by her revelation to move, and after a moment she turned and headed down the stairs. 

“I shall do my best,” he finally managed, after the door had shut behind her. The Headmaster’s eyes were on him, heavy and blue and waiting. Of course it was going to fall to him. Of course.

***

Harry stared at the dried blood under his cheek, blood that wasn't his but was fresh enough to fill his overloaded senses with the coppery scent of old iron. His hands were bound over his head, his abdomen bent over the edge of what appeared to be a carved altar; they'd tied his feet to the base, spread wide, leaving him exposed. The cold marble ate at the warmth of his bare skin, the relief images in the top digging fire into the bones of his hips. He'd lost consciousness after they'd moved him here; however, another Enervating spell brought him awake screaming and helpless at the first _Crucio_. Without his hands, he couldn’t do anything to break free of it. They had battered him with hexes and curses, with blows when that lost its entertainment value. Someone had tried to put him under _Imperius_ , had thrust an erect penis in his face and tried to will him to suck it, had smashed his ruined, throbbing hands when he refused to open his mouth. But it had given them other ideas, ones he could do nothing to prevent. He’d screamed at the first dry thrust of a violent, relentless, intimate invasion of his body. As time progressed, everything became a long roil of pain, and he would have fallen to unconsciousness if they hadn’t kept spelling him awake.

As yet another made sport of his body, he began to understand that the training with Dumbledore this summer had really had a purpose, but for the life of him, he could not make himself separate from the agony. His brain felt like it was rattling in his skull, and he felt absurdly grateful that apparently someone amongst the Death Eaters found vomit distasteful, kept _Sourgify_ ing it away whenever his nausea became too much until there was nothing left to sick up. He needed his hands, he _was_ his hands; his _Schema_ and _Schemata_ abilities were centered on the now useless swollen stubs of crushed bone. He tried to heal them, but the pounding into his body was sending fresh waves of distracting agony following old ones as his penis was driven hard into the unforgiving apron of the altar with each thrust. And when the thrusting stopped, the curses returned.

He just needed to concentrate.

***

"This isn't Voldemort's work, Albus. Otherwise I'd have been summoned and made to _participate_. Bellatrix or Lucius must be doing this on their own. Harry really could be anywhere, but we should check Malfoy Manor, first." Severus felt a twinge of terror building inside him. If either Lucius or Bellatrix or, Merlin forbid, both of them, had Harry, there was a high probability of getting him out alive, as neither would not be so foolish as to destroy a kill that belonged to their Master. What they needed to worry about was getting the boy out before his mind was completely destroyed. He slumped into a chair, head in hands. The Boy Who Lived, stolen for a bit of sport. Maybe the Dark Lord would revenge him, out of sheer displeasure. Maybe they would just return Potter whole, while he was dreaming. He felt Dumbledore's hand on his shoulder.

"Come, Severus. We must begin. I am going to contact Cornelius Fudge and see if we can have some Auror help. They have control of the Malfoy Estate." 

Snape nodded numbly and headed down to his workroom. He was going to prepare the healing draughts and sleep draughts that they would need--and think.

***

Harry was in such agony that he was nearly beyond pain. He was tied down again to the marble altar. He might have been other places, but over time but it was getting hard to remember. The room was entirely stone, windowless and damp, with a feeling of weighted ancientness that came to him even through his suffering. It was filled with the suffering of others, more recent. 

His knees and ankles had been tied together with his body pulled up into a kneeling position, and then secured so that his buttocks were parallel to the end of the table, and his wrists were bound at the corners of the table, so that he appeared to be in a position of prostrated worship. His legs had long ago gone numb. He was covered in blood and semen and only the gods knew what else. His eyes were swollen shut and encrusted with blood, so he was finally spared the sight of his captors.  
All of their faces were burned into his brain.  
Their faces as they cursed him.  
Their faces as they hit him.  
Their faces as they came. 

But now he was in blissful darkness. Beneath him, the stone was slick and sticky, and finally warm. Harry supposed it was his blood. A few hours ago, it had all faded, and now he barely even noticed the fingernails that ripped into his skin, the blows rained on him, or much of anything else. Recently, he had even ceased to feel looseness of his teeth, or taste his own coppery blood. The only thing that could make him feel anything was _Crucio_.

When the rest tired, it was Bellatrix’s turn to have him. She had them lay him back down on the stone altar, not even bothering to tie him down. She bound him with her words and her wand, leaving him more helpless than when the ropes had dug into his flesh. 

Lovingly, with the concentration of a master, she carved a Dark Mark on the tender inside face of his left arm with her favorite daggers. She dipped them first into a small brazier, until their keen edges and wicked points glowed a hot red. Stroking his skin with those edges and pressed points, the image of the skull and the snake took slow perfect shape amidst the sounds of sizzling and roasting flesh. While waiting for her little tools to gather their rosy colour, she would lean over and bite and lick Harry, investigating old wounds and new. He was helpless to do more than lie there, unable to even gaze at her in sickened pain. It had been a long time since he could scream, and even his whimpers were thready and broken as he inhaled the smell of his own flesh burning.

As she started her artistic work on his stomach and abdomen, he finally broke away from the physical tortures, could finally retreat into that place Albus had forced him to find this summer when the pain of training came too intense. The solid place within himself where he always resided in bliss and peace. He found his mantra and soon they, and what else they were doing to him, faded into a shadowed background as he silently repeated the words.

 _'I am not the pain. I won't let them break me. I am not broken. Albus and Severus will come. I am not the pain. I won't let them break me. I am not broken. Albus and Severus will come.'_ Harry, in the midst of his agony, did not notice that Snape had become Severus. He simply repeated his litany, and waited for the men to come and make it stop.


	11. Strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> strength-an empowering strength, merging strengths in a cooperative endeavor. attainment at considerable peril. attraction of complementary energies and qualities.
> 
> **this chapter contains the aftermath of extreme violence and references to serious injury and some body horror.**

Severus and Albus were getting frantic. Harry was kidnapped on Wednesday, it was now the wee hours of Friday, and they were no closer to finding him. No student had been allowed to leave their House, and everyone in Harry's Advanced Potions class had been given a drop of Veritserum and ordered to relate their version of events. They discovered that Pansy Parkinson had placed the Portkey, which had been sent to her by her father. It was set to only transport Harry. She had not known what it was, she was only told to place it, and was following her father's directions. There were no leads on Harry's whereabouts. All they knew was that he was still alive, as Dumbledore had not felt any indication of his death, which would be apparent no matter the distance.

Severus was pacing his room. All the 'typical' Death Eater torture areas were empty, and he had felt no summons from the Dark Lord to indicate that this was a sanctioned kidnapping, or that the Dark Lord even knew about it. The Aurors had proclaimed that no one was in Malfoy Manor, or any of the other seized Death Eater properties. Neither Severus nor Albus had been allowed to do any searching personally. When Dumbledore suggested it, Cornelius Fudge became most offended that his Aurors were being belittled. 

Severus sat down at his desk and took a silk pouch out of a heavily warded drawer in his desk. He slid the well-worn cards out of their pouch and shuffled them thoroughly, feeling their tingle spread through his fingers. He laid out the cards, and took a deep breath. Despite his public denunciation of any sort of Divination, Severus found that this particular deck of tarot cards resonated highly with him. The fact that they had been a gift from Lily Evans was, he told himself, beside the point. They had not yet failed him, even if only to help put his thoughts in order. He laid the cards in his own pattern, derived from a particularly archaic form where the reader asked the questions as he placed the cards.

 _Who am I looking for?_ This question was more a test than anything. He needed to be sure he wasn't being sidetracked by the cards. He turned the first two cards.  
The Star. Well that, assuredly, was Harry. _Trust in oneself and the universe. Giving of oneself without regret._ The boy's nature was his bounty and bane.  
Princess of Cups. _Healing, magic, charisma, magnetism, attraction._ Undoubtedly Harry. Satisfied, he turned the next cards.

 _What has happened to him?_  
The Devil. _Bondage, loss of self to another's will, violence._ He really didn't want to consider the full implications of the card for Harry.  
Eight of Staves, inverted. _Wanton destruction, desecration of the sacred, defying authority._ Severus' belly went cold. He knew firsthand of the tortures Lucius was capable of, and his own participation had been required in more than a few such events. The thought of it happening to Harry, to any other child, made him feel sick. He turned the next cards.

 _Where is he?_  
The Magician, inverted. Justice, inverted. The Four of Sacred Circles.  
 _A male magician, malevolent, injustice, home--_ and then all the pieces fit together. 

His chair tipped back and clattered to the floor as Severus swept off to find Dumbledore. Halfway to the Headmaster's office, Severus collided forcibly with him in the hallway.

"Malfoy Manor!" he declared. "Harry is somewhere in Malfoy Manor. We must hurry." Albus had been somewhat skeptical of the Minister's simpering promise that Malfoy Manor had been thoroughly searched, and immediately discarded the order to stay away from the Manor for Snape's certainty that Harry was there. He did not pause to ask the Potions Master how he came to this conclusion. If Severus didn’t doubt, it was worth investigating. "There's plenty of Malfoy Manor that no one but Lucius probably knows about."

"I can find him once we're there," Dumbledore said dismissively. "There is little time to waste." They both set off down the hall at the briskest walk they could manage. Albus glanced at his Potions Master, whose face was set in hard lines to cover his distress. Snape had not slept since Harry's disappearance. His work in finding the boy had been tireless. He'd Pensieved his memories, he'd the Aurors every lead possible to find the lost boy, he'd brewed every potion he could imagine that they might need when they recovered Harry. Severus looked worn and wasted, and now his eyes looked haunted by what he expected to see. The two Wizards headed towards Hogsmeade to the point where the wards stopped and allowed them to Apparate.

They arrived in a deserted hallway somewhere deep in Malfoy Manor. Albus staggered slightly under the weight of sudden pain, and Severus steadied him. The old wizard's eyes seemed far away, and he began walking down the hall, feeling his way along the wall, muttering to himself. He led them deeper into the Manor, and stopped in front of a blank place in the wall. "Door, here." he informed Severus shortly. He started muttering unlocking spells, feeling for the _Schema_ within the spell. His fingers twitched on the stones, and they began to move.

Much like the entrance to Diagon Alley, the stones slid quietly apart into the opening of a passageway. Severus swept through it, not waiting to see if Dumbledore followed. Halfway down the dark stairwell, Albus grabbed his arm, halting him.

"He's down there, Severus. It's not good." Severus nodded once, a gesture that Dumbledore did not see so much as felt and started down the stairs again. When they saw the light of the doorway at the end of the stairs, they both stopped. Albus could hear Severus drawing deep breaths through his mouth, calming himself. Severus had seen plenty, he could handle this. "I'll take care of them. You get Harry and get out of here. I'll follow you shortly." Another nod from Severus. This one, he could see. The Potions Master's face vacillated between worry and fury, settled on fury. Dumbledore charged through the door, throwing curses left and right, and Snape made a beeline for the group of rapidly falling Death Eaters.

It was worse than he'd expected--that was probably one of the greater understatements of his life. Harry lay limply over an ornate stone altar; his eyes crusted shut, and his entire face drenched in blood. His hair was stiffened with it. Head to foot, the boy was bloody, lying in sticky pool of darkened red. His hands were flayed almost beyond recognition, tied to the altar above his head. His body was shockingly limp, and his limbs hung at odd angles, making Severus think several of his bones were broken. Severus immediately unbound him, and gathered the naked and broken body up in his arms. A levitation spell had not even occurred to him, though it would likely have been easier for both of them. Harry made a wet wheezing groan as Severus picked him up off the table, and tried to speak. Severus shushed him and Apparated back to Hogwarts, practically screaming for Madam Pomfrey as he raced up the road, into the castle, and to the Hospital wing. It never occurred to him to let go of the shattered boy, and Harry fell unconscious after a few moments. 

Severus lay the broken boy gently down on a bed. Poppy was at his side immediately, whispering a cleaning spell so they could inspect the damage. The boy's entire body was a bruise. His legs didn’t quite sit right, as though his hip was dislocated. He was covered in ritual cuts, including the Dark Mark, which was etched and burned into his inner left arm. Harry Potter, branded with the Dark Mark, even if it was only an imitation of the cursed thing. Severus felt the bile rising in his throat and sat heavily into a chair to keep the black sparkles back from the edges of his vision. Head in his hands, he was half aware of Harry whispering hoarsely to Madam Pomfrey.

"He wants you as a channel to _Sanos_ heal, Severus. You must. He says that it must be you, he won’t accept me or Albus. Start with his hands." Harry was gasping for breath, his chest rising off the bed slightly as he struggled for oxygen. Snape found himself utterly captured by the look on the boy's face. He was a poor _Sanos_ healer, not being a _Schematic_ adept, but knew enough. "His hands, Severus!" Poppy's voice cut sharply through his daze, its edge honed by panic. 

He cradled one utterly ravaged hand between both of his, and forced himself to relax into the _Sanos_. Potter was there waiting for him, throat and lungs too ravaged to hum the note himself. There was little the boy could do beyond showing Severus what needed doing and keeping himself open to it being done. Without his hands, Harry could not manipulate his own _Schema_. He painstakingly knit the hand back together, and was only vaguely aware of Poppy as she placed the other hand into his. There were sounds in the room, rasping sounds and talking sounds, but they weren’t important. There was just _Sanos_ , just Potter’s ruined hands slowly becoming whole again.Then he became aware of Poppy’s voice, addressing him.

"Severus. Severus! Down to your knickers, now!" He startled out of his _Sanos_ trance, the note ending abruptly. On the bed, Potter twitched, cracked open his swollen eyes, wiggled his fingers. Distantly, Severus could feel a mental sigh of relief. Harry couldn’t catch his breath enough for a proper one. 

"Excuse me?" 

"Do it!" The severity and desperation in the woman's voice brooked no argument. He waved his wand at himself and his clothes lay folded neatly in a chair. "Now lay down." She pointed to a bed, and he obediently lay on it. What happened next shocked him. She levitated Harry gingerly and laid him on Severus, chest to chest, so that the boy's forehead lay on his own. He looked up to find the barest slits of green eyes looking back at him. Was this really happening? Had Potter known all along?

"Yes.” The boy's words were mere breaths with no vocal noise at all. Severus guessed that his windpipe had nearly been crushed. “Not Albus. Agree?” 

Above them, Pomfrey made an anxious, impatient noise, but Harry just waited. He’d waited this long. “I agree.” Harry blinked his understanding. His head was barely balanced against Severus’ as it was, and moving it made him dizzy.

“Hands--your head. My hands..." He gingerly took the boy's newly healed hands and put them on his own head. "Yours--my back. Neck--tailbone..." He placed his own hands as he was ordered. "Now--together..." Harry whispered. Severus took a breath, began to hum, and felt himself pulled into the deep concentration of _Sanos_. The boy's body was weak, but his magical energy, gone unused through his captivity was a forceful current in Severus' body, pouring in through his chest, through the point on his forehead where Harry's scar pressed against his skull, through his groin, and especially through his temples, where the boy's hands limply rested, tangled in his hair so they wouldn't fall. Harry's energy was warm, powerful, and deeply alive, despite the dire state of his body. He warmed Severus to the core, relaxing him further into the _Sanos_. Harry's voice was directly inside his head. 

_'Direct it, Severus. Heal me. Help me. I don’t know enough.'_ And so direct it he did. Harry’s thoughts were utterly open to him, and this allowed Severus to see his _Schema_ with a clarity he had never before glimpsed. Potter’s well of power was deep, and he simply opened it to Severus as though he had nothing to fear. And, Severus supposed, he didn’t, comparatively. With the fineness of Harry’s adept sight, he mended broken bones, bruised organs, and his damaged trachea. He also went back and fixed the fine motor control in Harry's hands, which he had been unable to do through the lesser hand-placing _Soma_. Despite the damage, they had not severed any major nerves beyond repair, and Harry's hands would be fully functional again. Harry had suffered no damage to his brain whatsoever, and Severus guessed that they had been 'careful' not to damage the boy's mental facilities. 

As he found less that needed healing, he began to pay more attention to the _Sanos_ magic flowing between their bodies. Memories flowed through Harry and into him, and he saw glimpses of Harry's two torturous days in the hands of Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange. He saw the cupboard under the stairs of 4 Privet Drive, the terrifying face of Albus Dumbledore on the attack, an image of two snakes twined through Harry's long fingers, Voldemort's sneering face in the graveyard, and realized that Harry was probably seeing similar things. He began to realize the full import of what he had agreed to. This was the other kind of _Sanos_ , the kind that was generally not performed. Severus Snape and Harry Potter were now partially bonded. It filled Severus with wonder and fear, and he wasn’t entirely sure to which of them it belonged. Then there was an exhausted sort of amusement, comfort, and reassurance that didn’t quite bank the fear. _’You keep saving me.'_ Harry’s voice was clear and soft in his mind, grateful and trusting and sad and afraid all at once.

 _’It does look that way,’_ Severus found himself agreeing. 

***

Poppy Pomfrey was growing desperate. Man and boy had lain there unmoving for hours, and the currents of magic in the room were nearly unbearable. Albus had returned only recently, looking exhausted. She had seen to him and then they both sat down to wait, Albus’ ridiculous tea set floating between them. She had heard the boy's breathing deepen and quiet, indicating the healing of his throat, and watched his bones re-set and his bruises fade, but other than that she had no real clue as to their progress. Neither of them were visibly struggling, at very least.

After what seemed an interminable time, the magic subsided, and she saw both Severus and Harry open their eyes. Harry's arms immediately encircled the chest of the Potions Master, who somehow managed to maneuver the boy so that he could sit up, cradling the newly whole body of Harry Potter to his chest possessively. Harry's skin was still covered with scars that shaped ghastly images, but they could be undone with a lesser Healing. Poppy could do nothing but watch, letting herself give in to relief. They were both alive. Nothing had gone wrong. Her legs felt weak as she watched the usually stoic Potions Master cradling a naked Harry Potter to his own bare body with the utmost tenderness.

As Severus came back to himself, he realized that Harry was murmuring something into his chest.

"I knew you'd come, Severus. I knew the whole time you'd come." As he heard the words, felt Harry's jaw shaping them over and over against his chest, Harry’s tears finally came, and Severus found himself weeping as well. The boy had been through hell that he had only glimpsed during the Healing, yet he was trying to comfort Severus. Harry wept unashamedly, his tears running warm down Severus' chest; Severus did not understand whether he was weeping only because Harry was, because of Harry’s emotions, or of his own violition. He rocked them both gently back and forth, and cried silent tears into the hair of a boy who, only three months ago, he had hated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the star-trust in oneself and the universe; giving of oneself unstintingly and without regret or fear of loss; life infused with joy or outward-directed activity.  
> princess of cups-a magical being, one who sees via the lens of insight. a healer, especially of the emotions. knowledge of herbs and the mysteries of earth; a deep intuitive knowledge of earth and water energies. charismatic energy; magnetism; attraction.  
> the magician, inverted- male active force, the use of power for negative purposes; powering over rather than empowering, selfish hoarding, exploiting others or resources.  
> justice, inverted-unfairness, bias, imbalance, discrimination, rewards to the undeserving. the scales tipped through bribary or corruption.  
> four of sacred circles-the home environment. setting things in motion following thorough preparation.


	12. The Hanged One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the hanged one-transition. a period of rest between significant events, a time when action is inadvisable. surrender to inevitable circumstances, descent to the depths of the self, altered perceptions by examining things from a different viewpoint.

It began that night. It started with Harry's waking; seizure-like shaking of limbs, a howl that tore from his throat. Then it spread, until all the students in the Infirmary were curled up and weeping, shaking and terrified. All the other students were cleared out of the hospital wing and moved to the Room of Requirement, which dutifully transformed into a completely equipped hospital. Severus fought Harry until the boy submitted to the potions that would calm him. He eventually fell into a drugged sleep, but by morning, even the paintings had vacated. 

With his hands now healed and all of his carefully constructed self restraints broken by days of constant and merciless torture, the walls that humans erect around their minds had crumbled, and Harry's _Schema_ had broken free and magnified, making his suffering manifest to anyone who ventured within its sphere. Harry's _Schema_ , like the _Schema_ of almost every powerful Wizard, had been apparent before in the magnetism that, for lack of a better word, his teachers had begun to call his aura. Now, that aura took on the opposite quality at far greater magnitude; anyone within two floors or forty yards of the hospital wing was now repelled with the force of all the negative emotion that Harry had wished to release on his attackers, but was unable to. Everything within the sphere of Harry's aura had to be relocated. Teachers made plans to use classrooms they could actually enter. Had it not started on Saturday and given them time to prepare, classes would have been chaos. 

Of all those who had been in the room when Harry awoke and it had all began, only Dumbledore, Madam Pomfrey, and Professor Snape remained able to withstand the onslaught. Harry had read all three of their _Schema_. This sort of aura manifestation was so rare no one was quite sure why Harry's knowledge of their _Schema_ protected them, but it was quite fortunate. Otherwise, no one would have been able to care for him, and the boy was certainly not capable of caring for himself. Unless Professor Snape lay in bed with him, Harry would thrash and moan, threatening to re-injure himself. Albus had recommended he be medicated into near oblivion, separating mind from body and allowing Harry to sort through his horrific memories without physically damaging himself any further. Despite Severus’ efforts, Harry did not seem to understand what he was doing or what was happening around him, but Severus felt nothing from the boy to indicate he was fighting against their ministrations. It was the rest of the world he was fighting against. His brain was feverishly working through his experiences, trying to make it all manageable with Severus' assistance.

The moment she heard of his return, Hermione was bound and determined to see Harry. At breakfast, she convinced Ron to accompany her. They had both heard the rumors of the darkness surrounding the Hospital wing, but nothing short of having the door barred by the Dark Lord himself was going to keep Hermione away.

"You don't have to talk to Harry. Be there for my moral support, at least," she pled.

And Ron had grudgingly acquiesced. But as they entered into Harry's aura, Ron stopped cold. Pain stabbed behind his eyes, and he wanted to howl from the agonizing sadness that enveloped him.

"There's absolutely no bloody way I'm going any farther down this hall, Hermione. It's _terrible_. It's worse than spiders." His face had gone entirely white, and then greenish, and he was backing up slowly. She looked at him in exasperation.

"It does feel sad, yes. But not _terrible_." That wasn’t quite true. There was a pressure in her head, building up behind her eyes like unshed tears, and her stomach rolled with nausea and anxiety. All the same, she reached for his hand. “Come on, Ron, it’s Harry, we can do it.” 

Ron took several shaky breaths through his mouth, like he was trying not to throw up. Then his face set, determined, and he took Hermione’s hand, gripping until his knuckles turned white. Just because he was mad at Harry for going off and becoming something else while everyone else was on holiday didn’t mean that he wasn’t sick with worry. Worry and whatever it was that was radiating out from the Hospital wing. Hermione pushed open the door, which had been slightly ajar. 

They were greeted by a very strange sight. Harry was lying in bed, his glasses off and his hair matted to his head in damp clumps. He looked very pale, but he seemed to be resting quietly. That in itself wasn't so odd. What made the picture surreal was the fact that his hand was resting on Professor Snape's thigh. The Potions Master was sitting close to the bed in a comfortable looking chair she would have been willing to bet Dumbledore conjured for him and reading a book. As they watched, his hand dropped to gently stroke Harry's sweaty hair before lifting again to turn the page of his book, which he propped close to his face with his other hand.

"Ah, Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley, do come in." The voice of Professor Dumbledore cut through her daze. "I see you managed to penetrate Mr. Potter's little defense system."

"Defense system?" Hermione spoke for both of them. "Is that what this is? What has Harry done? Is he all right?" Her voice was rising in a panic she found she couldn't control. Ron’s lips pressed tightly together, trying to keep his lunch down.

"Please, come sit down." Dumbledore waved his wand, and a loveseat appeared next to the bed, on the opposite side from where the Potions Master sat. They sat carefully, still clinging to each other’s hands. Hermione looked expectantly at the Headmaster, who had a chair beside the loveseat, by Harry’s head. Snape appeared to be pointedly ignoring all of them. Hermione’s stomach twisted into knots, and the pressure in Ron’s head increased until he squinted, the light in the room suddenly seeming too bright.

Dumbledore spent a moment watching their faces. He knit his fingers together and propped his elbows on the chair before he spoke. "Harry has been through a very traumatic experience in the past days, one which he may relate to you if he wishes and one which, truly, we don't entirely know. When we found him, he was gravely injured, mentally as well as physically." 

Hermione looked over at Harry, who still appeared to be lying there peacefully, though his fingers were twitching slightly on the Professor's thigh. Snape put his hand on top of Harry's, thumb tracing the bumps of his knuckles. Ron made a small noise of protest, which was summarily ignored. When Harry’s fingers stopped twitching, the Potions Master removed his hand. He never looked up from his book or paused in his reading. Ron’s face clouded. Hermione looked at Harry, obviously still naked under his sheets.

"Will he..." She found herself unexpectedly close to tears.

Dumbledore smiled kindly. "We expect he'll make a full recovery. He just needs time. Right now, he's heavily sedated, which is why he hasn't acknowledged you." Dumbledore patted her hand comfortingly. Albus was tired from the time he had worked to heal Bellatrix's work on Harry's skin. The Dark Mark, especially, had been difficult to remove entirely, as it had Dark Magic caught up in it. Harry didn't even realize that he had ever had the scars, though he did remember Bellatrix carving the Dark Mark. Albus had purposefully left several others, imbuing them with the same sort of power that he had left in Harry's training scars from the summer, but they were all covered by Harry's blankets. They would serve to both protect and remind, later.

It was obvious that Harry’s friends were starting to feel overwhelmed with sadness, despite the fact that Harry's outlook was positive. Hermione’s head was swimming, and Ron put one hand to his forehead, covering his eyes. 

"I expect, Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley, that you might experience some relief of the onslaught of Harry's aura if you touch him. It might even bring him around enough to react to you." Snape's silky, acidic voice cut suddenly into the air. Hermione's and Ron’s heads shot up in unison, their mouths falling open.

"Did you just call him Harry?" Ron found his voice first. Then he gulped, either from the rising anxiety imbued by Harry’s aura or the unsettling gaze of the Potions Master.

Snape looked oddly at them, his black eyes seeming to take their measure, and went back to his book without another word. Granger and Weasley had no idea how strong the impulse was to climb into bed with Harry, to cradle the boy to his chest until they were both calm again. He was reading to distract both himself and Harry, and because Harry seemed to find it soothing, though Severus severely doubted that Harry understood the Potions theory he was reading. He could apparently hear Snape's internal narrative, though Severus couldn't understand much of what was happening in Harry's mind. His hand stroked Harry's head again. 

"Is that why he's touching you?"

"Miss Granger, I would thank you to stop your interrogation," he snapped, more quick to temper than usual. This whole exercise was Albus-engineered ridiculousness, a careful show for Harry’s friends that they were not appreciating to its fullest. "Harry and I have been partially bonded via _Sanos_ healing. For the next few days, our bond will be especially strong. He apparently finds it comforting to be in direct contact with me. I assure you," he finished, his voice tinged with bitterness, "the condition is not permanent." 

Harry thrashed his head a little, clenching his fingers around Snape's robes. Snape immediately bent his head close to Harry's, stroking the boy's hair and speaking soothingly to him in a low velvety voice. Neither Hermione nor Ron had ever heard such a voice from the Professor. It sounded like he was pouring verbal honey over Harry's head. Harry opened his eyes and mumbled to the Potions Master. His words just reached his friends’ ears, and they were right next to the bed.

"Sev...Don't be angry, Sev. Don't need to be angry." As one, they stiffened in shock. Since when did Harry call Snape anything familiar, much less a nickname?

"Shhhh, Harry. I won't be angry anymore, all right. I won't be angry anymore." Snape was looking into Harry's eyes, stroking his hair with the utmost tenderness, and Harry was stroking Snape's leg with shaky fingers. Their foreheads touched lightly, Snape's hair falling over his shoulder and onto Harry's chest. Dumbledore pulled Hermione’s and Ron’s attention from the bizarrely tender and embarrassingly private scene by answering their unspoken questions.

"Severus and Harry have been bonded by the _Sanos_ healing that Severus performed to save Harry's life. In this particular case, the type of _Sanos_ coupled with the fact that Harry fed his _Sanos_ energy into Professor Snape to assist in the healing process, the bond is very strong. That means that right now, Harry feels Severus' emotions, and Severus feels Harry's. It is temporary, as Professor Snape informed you earlier, but it is so strong that I consider it necessary to take over Professor Snape's classes until he and Harry can be comfortably separated. It is also true that if you touch Harry, you will receive a respite from the onslaught of his uncontrolled aura; that is, the manifestation of his _Schema_. I'd imagine that it is probably making you rather uncomfortable." 

Ron thought that he heard Snape snort softly. He was aware that the two children were buckling under the pain that Harry was broadcasting. Everyone else in the room had Schematic control, and could fight the aura better. It was remarkable that they’d withstood it this long. Snape had to admit a grudging respect for their stubbornness, at least in this respect. Harry felt pleased about that, although he didn’t understand what had caused Severus’ feelings. 

"Touching him will also help him recognize that you're here, and may or may not prompt him to speak to you," Dumbledore concluded. 

They nodded, and turned back to face the bed. Snape had gone back to reading his book as if nothing abnormal had occurred just moments ago. It was an understatement to say that the two Gryffindors were deeply confused by this glimpse of a Severus Snape they had never seen before. When he continued to ignore them, Hermione took Harry's left hand, which lay limp on the bed. It was covered in needle fine scars, thin white lines only visible from close up. They ran across the back of his hand, and up and across his fingers. She placed it on top of her and Ron’s joined hands.

The touch of Harry’s hand was like taking hold of clarity. The oppressive sadness weighing on them was gone. Harry's _Schema_ had been inundating them with those feelings, but somehow touching him made it stop. After a few long moments, Harry opened his eyes and turned his head a little to look at them. His eyes seemed slow to focus, like he was looking at something very far away.

"Ron.” A smile struggled its way onto Harry’s face. “You came.” 

“Of course I came, you bloody idiot! Who always shows up when you try and get yourself killed again? Ron Weasley, that’s who!” Harry couldn’t quite manage a laugh, but his smile widened, and Ron swore that he actually felt some sort of happiness trickle through Harry’s hand when his fingers twitched. “And some thanks I got for it too, I was almost sick all over my shoes.” Hermione elbowed him in the side and Ron winced. “Look, mate...”

“We’re good, Ron.” Harry’s fingers tried to squeeze over their hands, did a weak job of it. “Talk later. Don't worry. Especially about Sev. He's a good guy, you know. He saved me from them." It didn’t seem to occur to Harry that neither of his friends had any idea who ‘them’ was. His hand shook badly, and his eyes were glassy. Hermione didn't even want to consider how much Calming Draught he'd probably had. His palm was feverishly warm, the back of his hand almost icy. "Mione." She looked into his eyes. "Be good to Sev, okay? Ron..." He trailed off, his eyes shutting slowly.

"What, Harry?" Ron asked, shaking Harry’s hand a little as though it might rouse him.

"Harry is very sorry that he'll be missing Quidditch. And tell Miss Weasley that she is a fine Seeker." Snape didn't even look up from his book as he relayed Harry's message. Harry squeezed their hands, as if to indicate that what Severus had said was, indeed, what he'd wanted to say. Hermione fled the room before her composure cracked, pausing only to whisper a choked "Thank you" to Snape. Ron left more slowly, taking a moment to drop a hand on Harry’s shoulder, patting it in a way that managed to be both awkward and heartfelt. He gave Snape a poisonous glare before turning and hurrying after Hermione, but Harry only seemed amused at Severus’ affront. 

Severus looked up at Dumbledore and sighed. "That didn't go very well, Albus." The headmaster chuckled.

"I think Harry disagrees with you, Severus." The boy had reached up and taken Severus' hand, intertwining their fingers. His lucidity was slipping, which meant that Severus was treated to a rather disjointed slurry of memories of the youngest Weasley boy’s temper and Harry’s muzzy happiness that his friend had come. 

"I'm aware, thank you, Headmaster." In spite of himself, Severus Snape squeezed Harry Potter's hand, and could have sworn he saw the boy smile at him. Certainly, he felt the place a smile would have been. He was so concentrated on Harry, he entirely missed Albus' satisfied expression.


	13. Three of Staves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> three of staves-successful conclusion of a journey or project. leaping back into the mainstream of activity following a period of withdrawal or inactivity. inheritance; passing power, wealth, or wisdom to the next generation.

It took several days before Harry was coherent and fully awake, and only then as long as he was in direct contact with Severus. Whenever they broke contact, even if only so Severus could use the loo, Harry would thrash and moan. The first time, he had flung himself out of bed in an attempt to get back to Severus. It seemed that Dumbledore could calm him to some extent, but the Headmaster was simply not available to rush to their aid whenever Severus needed to relieve himself. For his part, Severus felt extraordinarily uncomfortable whenever the boy wasn't touching him. Thus it came to be that the most feared teacher in Hogwarts placidly used a self-emptying bedpan behind a curtain that Madam Pomfrey had set up for that purpose. No doubt that under normal circumstances the situation would be most embarrassing for the intensely private man. If anything, it was almost embarrassing how not embarrassed he was. Being so closely bonded was surprisingly comfortable, although it could only be a side effect. It would be extremely negative for both parties if bonding was discomforting.

In a normal incidence of such temporary bonding, a talisman would have sufficed to balm the need for physical contact. However, Harry's rather unique mental condition made such a thing impossible. Harry needed Snape there, in his mental and physical entirety, for support. He drew from Severus' strength of person and from the walls that the Potions Master had built between himself and the world. Without Severus, he had no walls of his own, and his mind verged again on collapse.

Once Harry was coherent again, the Headmaster tried to explain what had happened. Harry had no idea how much time had passed, was horrified when he learned what havoc his aura was causing. For hours, he had alternated between crying and shaking, leaving Severus helpless to do anything but hold the boy and rock him, murmuring comfort as Harry alternately relived his torture and realized the pain he was trying to cause others, a pain he was unable to fight or stop. It was only made worse by the fact that Severus lived through every minute with him. Severus had saved Harry, had healed him, and in return, Harry’s memories were torturing him. In his more lucid moments, the knowledge of that fact was a well of grief inside the boy, no matter how much Severus tried to dismiss it. He now knew intimately the pain, both physical and mental, that Harry had survived, but he was careful to keep his own painful memories locked away. Harry was suffering too much to notice. By nightfall, they had both been so drained that they had fallen asleep together, entwined on the bed. Neither Albus nor Poppy wanted to separate them. It was the best either had slept since Harry's kidnapping, and they awoke the next morning with Harry's emotions slightly more under control. He did not break down again, and their work on his repair began. 

They shared many strange experiences together that day, not the least of which was bathing. Harry had positively insisted that he wanted to be washed with water, that _Scourgify_ was not enough. He wanted a soap and water bath, and Severus was inclined to agree with him. After a great deal of bickering about practicality, Madam Pomfrey finally gave in.

She decided that they would bathe one at a time, Harry first. Harry, still too weak to stand on his own, let a spell of Poppy's support his weight and allowed the witch to bathe him while his hand, peeking between the curtains, intertwined with Severus'. Severus felt Harry's rush of pleasure as the water rolled down over him, washing away the last residues of the sins committed on his body. Memories flashed through his head of floating in his bath, resolving his thoughts while staring out the skylight at the stars.

_'Princess of Cups, more and more,'_ Severus mused, feeling the water washing over Harry's body as if it was his own. It was strange, surreal, more than a little hallucinatory and shockingly intimate. 

_'Eh?'_ Harry's confusion came to him only in his mind; the boy's hand still remained lightly holding his own.

_It's a tarot card. There are decks beyond the standard that useless woman tries to teach. Someday I'll show you.'_

_'All right.'_ Harry's hand squeezed his, and the boy made a small sound of pleasure. Severus could feel Madam Pomfrey's fingers kneading shampoo into Harry's unruly hair. He rubbed his own hair, still greasy from the Potions laboratory, to try and ease the eerieness of feeling exactly what Harry felt. The sensations had never been so strong, although their situations had not been so different before. Harry was again under the showerhead, the soap being rinsed from his body. Poppy wrapped him in an enormous towel and rubbed him dry. The places where Albus had done the most work on Harry’s skin were still sensitive and new, and Severus could feel the towel’s scratch against his own flesh. She levitated him out from behind the curtain and sat him in the chair that Severus had quickly vacated. 

He stepped behind the curtain, still holding Harry's hand, and spelled his clothes onto a chair waiting just behind the curtain. There was no sense in attempting to get undressed manually while still maintaining contact with Harry; it was simply too problematic. Truly, the whole idea of bathing while in contact seemed slightly problematic. It wasn’t as though the Potions Master had any intentions of letting anyone else help him wash. He considered for a moment, and then asked Poppy to move Harry's chair closer to the bath. Taking a deep breath, he put Harry's hand on his hip. Long fingers hooked gently into his prominent hipbone, the hold firm but not desperate. Harry’s hand remained utterly still while Severus bathed, moving with him as he needed to shift. It did not slide or change grip, though by the end Severus could feel the exhausted tremble in the boy’s arm. It was more than he’d done with his muscles for days. While Severus washed, Harry kept his thoughts on that tub, the skylight full of stars. It seemed to make the surreal experience of feeling someone else’s bath a bit easier to process. He didn’t think of his body, of Severus’ body, just of water and stars. Severus found he appreciated Harry's courtesy as much as he did the chance to wash himself. 

The end of his shower presented another problem. He needed to dry himself and put on a dressing gown without losing contact with Harry. After a long pause for consideration, he latched onto the only solution he could figure. After scrubbing his hair perfunctorily damp with a towel and asking Poppy to levitate the chair, he lifted Harry's hand from his hip, held it while he stepped out of the tub, and then lifted it to his hair. The long fingers gently twisted through the inky tendrils, holding firm. Were it not for the levitation spell, it probably would have pulled, but instead the boy just floated at arm’s length. Harry whimpered softly; the contact was barely enough for him. Severus could feel the boy's thoughts getting more chaotic, but through some supreme act of will Harry remained lucid. Severus dried himself as quickly and thoroughly as he could before slipping on the dressing gown and cinching it tight around his waist. He took Harry's hand again as he emerged from behind the curtain. Before he had time for a coherent thought, Harry was clinging to most of his arm, nearly falling out of his chair. Sinewy arms snaked up the sleeve of his robe, stopping just above his elbow. The pads of Harry’s fingers pressed into his flesh. Severus stroked the boy's wet, unruly hair until he stopped shaking. It took a few minutes before Harry slid his arms back down until he held Severus' hand loosely with both of his, the visions of Bellatrix and her knives fading back into memory. Mind clear again, he looked up at Severus and smiled, basking in the warmth and calm that came from a long-wished-for shower.

Poppy Pomfrey noted that both wizards seemed to benefit from bathing, despite her reservations and the challenge of accomplishing it in the first place. Harry's skin was rosy from the heat and her scrubbing, and he looked more awake and alive than he had in days. The change was mirrored in Severus, who looked more satisfied than she could remember. She assisted the pair in getting comfortably dressed and back into bed, and left them to care for the students in the makeshift Infirmary.

***

"So before I can leave, I have to get my aura under control?" Severus was sitting on the bed with Harry, letting the boy recline onto his chest and shoulder so that Harry could face him. The fingers of their right hands entwined loosely, and Harry's left hand was idly twisting Severus' long hair. He had been letting it grow since Harry's first year, and it hung halfway to his elbows. His hair wasn’t soft and cowlicked like Harry’s, it was thick and coarse, heavy and straight. It wasn’t soft, exactly, but Harry found he liked the texture of it, the way he could twist it around his fingers and it would fall away just as straight as before. As it turned out, the Potions Master was rather fastidious about cleanliness, but the constant exposure to potions fumes and the serum he put in his hair to keep it from falling out and contaminating his potions kept him looking rather unwashed. A shower and a few days outside the laboratory revealed that Snape was indeed sallow and possessed of crooked teeth, intimidatingly dark eyes and an overlarge nose set in a pointed, thin face that would not have by any means been considered conventionally attractive, but he wasn’t naturally greasy. Harry was beginning to find the sharp smell of bitter herbs and pickled ingredients that hung on his clothes rather comforting. 

"That's the idea. Once you do that, the strength of our bonding should lessen to a level similar to your bond with Albus, and we can both go back to our normal lives." Severus' words lacked any venom. The bond was strong enough that he had little want to speak to Harry in tones other than calm and reasonable. It helped that the boy was listening intently. Some distant part of him was eager to regain his privacy, to stop walking this strange, intimate tightrope with a half-grown boy who also happened to be the sworn enemy of the man Severus risked his life to spy on. "Some bond will remain, but Albus tells me it will be no more bothersome than yours with him once you have rebuilt your mental walls. Once you manage some progress, I can go back to teaching my classes while you recover.” There was a flash of discomfort from Harry, the instinctive fear of being left alone with his thoughts. “ _Comfortably_ separated, Potter.” Harry ducked his head, at once embarrassed by the need to be reassured and pleased that Severus had done it. “In the meantime, Madam Pomfrey, Miss Granger and I will tutor you in what you're missing, as no one else can come see you besides Mr. Weasley. Who will, I have been told, be coming to see you. Between us, we should be able to cover everything." Severus gave Harry an appraising look. "The fact that you didn't know any of that means that you're making some progress." Harry gave him a wry little smile. He wasn’t, at least, always in Severus’ mind anymore, allowing for some illusion of privacy sometimes. "If you work hard, you should be able to go to the Hallowe'en feast."

"I'll dress as a vampire," Harry deadpanned. "Then we'll match." To his surprise, Severus actually let the amusement he felt at Harry's joke emerge in a chuckle. The sound of it brightened Harry's face into a real smile as the bond flooded Severus with warmth. Harry was probably the only student in the school who wholly discounted the vampire rumor, including the members of his own House. “Other people might too if you ever got some sun.”

“You remain an insufferable prat.” It was a conversation they had certainly had before. Harry just smiled and refrained from reminding Severus that he seemed to be suffering him just fine, at least aloud.

"You laugh like water, Severus. It's lovely." Severus was not really the sort to voice a 'thank you' at any sort of compliment, but Harry felt the trickle of surprised pleasure anyway.

***

Albus was almost sorry to interrupt Severus and Harry’s peaceful dozing, the smaller lying lightly across the chest of the larger, but he woke them regardless. It was Harry who snapped awake first, panicked and clenching his arms around Severus in a gesture that was half giving protection and half begging it. Severus' arms came up around Harry an instant later, first shielding and then rubbing the knobby spine under his fingers. When his eyes opened, he glared up at Albus.

"The boy is still skittish." There was a shocking amount of venom in the statement. Skittish was an understatement; the fear that had coursed through Severus had nearly left him as paralyzed as Harry was.

Albus looked down at the pair. Harry finally turned his head and looked up at the Headmaster. His eyes were unfocused, as if he was looking inward instead of outward. Albus almost flinched; he had seen that look in those eyes many times before. "My apologies, Severus. Far be it from me to rouse you from your nap for pleasantries, though. I am overdue for a new batch of my Protection Potion. The last dose has lost its effectiveness." He had not had his usual dose at the end of the previous week, and missing two doses was inadvisable. If the Headmaster was weak, Hogwarts would be weak.

"And how are we to do that? Shall I just escort Harry to my laboratory?" Severus was annoyed, and his annoyance only increased when the Headmaster's eyes started twinkling wickedly. Only Harry's current inability to cope with anger, the flood of pleading reassurances through the bond and the boy's fingers on his cheek stopped him from snapping at Albus. 

"Don't worry about such simple things, my boy. I'm having all your necessary equipment brought up here. Harry can assist you from a chair. It is, after all, essential that he provides his energy for the potion." Behind Albus, several house elves were arriving with ingredients and equipment in tow. "Now, if you'll excuse me." The Headmaster started toward the door, turning on the threshold to give them a cheery smile.

"Temper, Severus," Harry said into his chest, as though he was not frustrated himself. He had not moved during the entire exchange. Severus sighed. As usual, it did not particularly matter how he felt about it, the thing needed to be done, and the boy seemed similarly resigned as he continued to address Severus’ robes. "Now, how are we to manage this? I can do my part as long as I'm sitting, but we each need both our hands." He gave a wry little smile that pressed the muscle of his cheek into Severus. "This seems to be the problem of the day." 

"Well, Mr. Potter, I suppose we're going to have to use our legs, then." Harry made a face at the use of his formal name.

"Just because we're brewing this potion doesn't mean that you have to be ridiculous, _Professor Snape_." Severus jolted at how incredibly inappropriate those words sounded coming from the mouth of someone who was wrapped quite comfortably around him. Harry gave a mental laugh that prickled pleasingly through Severus. As much as the boy was making a joke of it, neither of them really wanted to think on the fact that they were student and teacher at the moment. 

From the bed, they set up their makeshift workspace, arranging the three necessary cauldrons and spelling Harry's chair to move at his command, enabling him to stay in contact with Severus. He then helped Harry stand waited for the boy to arrange himself in the chair. It was getting a bit embarrassing to not be able to get around on his own, but he need to save his energy for the preparation of the potion. Harry kept his hand on Severus' elbow until the Potions Master had found a comfortable position for both of them. He then looped his leg around the Professor's, his knee in front of Severus' thigh and his foot holding around his calf, chair hovering so that he could reach the high table. The arrangement was not ideal, but it insured that they would not be separated, and that they both had their hands free and enough elbow room to work. It was certainly not the most awkward thing they had done in the past few days. Harry began preparing the ingredients for one half the potion, while Severus worked on the other. Usually there was a sheet of instructions on the table for Harry, but this time he just picked the information straight out of Severus’ head. It would have been disturbingly invasive if it didn’t make everything simpler. They worked in comfortable silence, used to each other's presence, accommodating to each other's needs. Harry finished brewing his portion of the potion first, as his was the less complex half. He slumped back in his chair, tired from even that much effort but knowing better than to lean on the Potions Master while he was still working.

When Severus had finished his half of the potion, he turned to look at Harry. The boy was paler than he'd been earlier in the day, but when he felt Severus’ attention and opened his eyes, they were clear, and nothing in his mind indicated an overabundance of stress. It seemed that it was just Harry's body, recently subjected to so much stress, that was persistently weak.

Harry quirked his mouth. It wasn't quite a smile, but Severus caught his amusement. "I'm fine, Sev. No need to look at me like I'm about to break, I'm ready." He sat up in his chair, squeezing Severus' leg to help pull his body forward. The chair moved, bumping them together. Harry looped an arm around the Potions Master's waist and leaned, gathering strength from the increased contact. Severus brought the third cauldron forward and poured a ladle of each potion into it. They hissed softly as they combined, turning blood red. Both Harry and Severus simultaneously let out a small breath. It had worked. Harry dangled his hand into the cauldron, stopping his fingers inches above the steaming liquid and careful to keep his fragile new skin away from the heated metal edge.

Severus closed his eyes and reached through the bond to see what Harry was seeing. He had never entirely understood exactly what Harry was doing to increase the protection on the potion, as the threads were not clear to him as they were to Harry outside of _Sanos_. What he saw surprised him.

Harry was not only weaving a Protection charm, which was a complicated bit of wandless magic, but he was laying in the threads of his own protective ties to Albus, strengthening the potion with the old wizard's own magic. Of course, this was not all apparent from just the visual. All Severus could see was the crossing and braiding of threads, and then the binding of the charm to the potion. When Harry had realized he was being observed, he’d begun to explain what he was doing. It was shocking, the complexity of the magic Harry was performing. He was plainly tired from even this minor physical exertion, but there seemed to be an endless well of magical energy within his small and exhausted body. 

By the time Harry finished, he was trembling. He leaned heavily against Severus, tightening his grip on the older man's hip to near pain. Severus stroked his hair, looking down in the cauldron. With the addition of Harry's magic, the sample of potion had turned a deep rust red. When Harry had recovered a bit, he slumped against the back of the chair instead of against the Potions Master, allowing Severus to add the rest of each cauldron into the third, finishing the potion. He bottled the necessary amount, _Scourgified_ the cauldrons, and left the rest of the mess for someone else to clean up. 

As he was helping Harry back to bed, Albus returned. He took the containers of potion, smiled at Severus and Harry brightly, and disappeared again. Harry pulled Severus gently into bed beside him, curled up against him in what had become their normal sleeping position, and immediately dropped to sleep. Severus spent several minutes running his hands through Harry's surprisingly soft hair before he too succumbed to slumber, pulled under by the boy’s exhaustion.

***

As it turned out, rebuilding the mind of the Boy Who Lived turned out to be a halting, laborious process. Severus was not able to return to his classes until the Tuesday before the Hallowe'en feast, and he still spent every moment not teaching with Harry. While Harry was considerably more stable while the Potions Master was there with him, he slowly deteriorated in his absence. At first, across the room was too much absence, but Harry was persistent, pushing himself until he could bear longer times and further distances. He wanted Severus to have his freedom and privacy back, to not be tethered to Harry or the Hospital Wing, to not be kept from his classes and his research. It was the bond that kept the older wizard from chafing at all these restrictions to his already restricted existence, Harry was quite sure of it. 

The subsequent brewings of the Protection Potion were much easier than the first, but the reassembling of Harry’s mental defenses took time. Man and boy found their rhythm together; Severus was beginning to find that he really did enjoy Harry's company. All the same, he was grateful to get some of his life back, to have some privacy. He freely acknowledged that it could have been worse; he could have, for instance, been bonded to Longbottom. Harry laughed every time Severus thought it, and there was nothing to do but be warmed and lightened by the boy's laughter. As much as he loathed sentimentality, that laughter was going to be a rare and precious sound once Harry had rebuilt his walls. 

Hermione spent as many of her free moments as possible tutoring Harry, and sometimes Ron came with her. Although he was as much a distraction as anything else, Harry was still happy that his first friend was back with him again. Sometimes once his work was done they even played Exploding Snap, or Ron thoroughly trounced Harry at chess. Sometimes it seemed almost normal, except for all the ways it wasn’t. Harry exhausted himself every day between his studies and his attempts to rebuild the walls around his _Schema_. The task was daunting, but Harry's progress was quicker than his professors had expected. Severus had been extremely optimistic when he said that Harry should be able to attend the Hallowe'en feast. Optimism or not, though, Harry lived up to his expectations and had his aura mostly under control by Hallowe'en. 

His ordeal had cost him greatly, but it seemed to Harry that there was always an ironic good somewhere in even this great evil. His control of the _Schemata_ and his own _Schema_ had grown in his weeks of recovery. He was nowhere near really well, but he was functioning enough to rejoin the world again, at least a bit. 

To protect others from the negative aspects of his aura, which he and Severus were slowly healing, he had drawn magic around himself, weaving himself an invisible wall of support and protection. Harry's hair always waved in his magical wind, even in his sleep, and Severus and Albus were fairly sure that it always would. He had become even quieter than he was before, distant and muted where he had been active and bright. He smiled rarely, and only Severus and sometimes Ron seemed to be able to coax him to laugh. More often, he was just quiet, as if everything outside his head ceased to matter when he wasn’t being directly engaged. When someone spoke to him, he looked at them with pure concentration that could be disconcerting. It seemed he was trying to fathom what was behind their eyes. His friends had trouble telling how Harry was feeling most of the time, but when he did display the smile that was even more rare now than before, it felt like a pure reward. Severus found that even as his bond with Harry lessened, his wariness and dislike of the boy did not reappear. Harry was less clingy and revealed fewer thoughts to the Potions Master, but once the desperate need and fear had subsided, it was obvious that Harry still felt comfortable with him. It was only in Severus’ presence that a more familiar Harry Potter emerged, one who joked and laughed and occasionally pouted, who stubbornly worked toward his goals instead of getting lost in his head.

One of those goals was attending the Hallowe'en feast. Severus and Albus had both warned him that it would be stressful to be around so many people, but he was adamant. There had even been an argument about it, the first time Harry had blatantly and firmly disagreed with Severus since they were bonded. He agreed to stay with Hermione at all times, and to let her know if he wasn't feeling well. Hermione, separately, agreed to let the Headmaster and the Potions Professor know if Harry was inadvertently making anyone else feel unwell. They had no idea how his walls would hold up against the onslaught of the entire student body, especially since he had been out of view for so long. All that they knew was that Harry's terrifying aura was restrained and that he could block both Albus' and Severus' attempts at Legilimency again. The rest was up to Harry. Severus was tempted to ask the Headmaster to let him stay close to Harry, but logic and reason dictated keeping a close eye on him from the Head Table. 

The Great Hall was decorated in true Hallowe'en fashion, complete with bats and hovering jack o' lanterns. Hermione sat on one side of Harry, Ron on the other, a familiar buffer against a world that seemed very unfamiliar. Harry still had an aura of strong magic, but it just felt like a gentle tingle, his fellow Gryffindors mostly ignored it. Ron threw dirty looks at anyone who looked too hard at Harry or started to ask any kind of stupid question, for which Harry was grateful. Being around so many people was indeed stressful and disconcerting, but the food was wonderful and Harry was glad to be out of the hospital wing doing something normal students did. Whenever the noise and crowding began to press on Harry’s chest, he glanced up at Severus, green eyes seeking black ones. Each time, Severus met his gaze levelly, as though he’d anticipated Harry looking, and Harry felt better afterwards. 

By the time the Gryffindors were on their second plates of dessert, though, Harry’s defenses had had enough, leaving him dizzy and more than a little disoriented. His exchanges with Severus had ceased to ground him. The Great Hall was spinning slightly, and he felt unbearably hot and closed in. The press of the _Schemas_ of every Hogwarts student was starting to overwhelm him. 

"Mione, Ron, I think I'm going to go back to the Hospital wing. I'm tired." His voice was soft, and had a ragged edge to it that Hermione almost missed. Her instincts activated, she eyed him sharply.

"Do you want me to come with you?" She was surprised at how motherly her voice sounded, even to her. It was nearly enough to make her blush. Ron was already halfway to standing on Harry’s other side, but Harry waved them both off, climbing carefully over the bench.

"No, I'll make it on my own." As he walked away, they watched the waving of his hair and robes. His magical wind had increased steadily throughout the night, and now it looked like he was walking in his own personal windstorm. The Gryffindor table resumed their revelry without so much as a pause. They were more used to Harry’s absence than his presence, this year. 

Halfway up the stairs to the Hospital wing, tired from his mental efforts and disoriented by his long lack of contact with Severus, the world lurched out from beneath Harry’s feet. His knees hit the stairs, then his hands, then the rest of him, and he was momentarily grateful for their coolness against his head before he succumbed to unconsciousness. At the Head table, Severus' entire body went tense, and he swooped out of the Great Hall without a word to anyone, leaving a moment of stunned silence in his wake. He had felt Harry's increasing disorientation, but had left the boy to his own devices. As much as the Hogwarts rumor mill turned, he had no desire to feed it by taking hold of the Boy Who Lived in public. He scooped Harry up from the stairs, feeling the boy regain consciousness with their contact. 

"Sev...too many sweets?" Harry was embarrassed at this weakness, tried to cover it with a joke. Severus snorted, but held Harry closer to him. Harry sighed, leaned his head against the Potions Master’s chest. They made their way up the stairs together, Severus catching Harry when he stumbled. He helped Harry to the bed he’d come to think of as theirs, the only full sized bed in the Infirmary, helped the boy with the buttons of his robes and the ties of his trainers. Once Harry was tucked into bed he made to turn away, but found Harry's hand on his wrist. 

"Don't leave, Sev. Come sleep w’ me. Long day--need rest. You--here. Not done w' me yet." His voice was a warm slur of syllables.

“One day, Potter, you will learn to communicate clearly.” Harry's ramblings made sense to Severus, but it felt more comfortable to criticize him, to practice the cooler relationship they used to have even as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his robes. Harry wiggled over, making room for Severus. He sighed, and removed his shoes, his robes, and his outer shirt. Then he climbed carefully into the bed with Harry, lying on his side facing the door. Harry curled against him, pressing their spines together in a comforting way. He no longer slept draped over Severus, as their waning bond had begun making them slightly uncomfortable with the intimacy of it. As he healed himself, it became more difficult to ignore that Harry was only 16, still half-grown, and Severus was actually old enough to be his father. Sleeping together, though, was still the most comforting and natural thing in the world, and it took almost no time at all for Harry’s fatigue to tug Severus down into sleep.


	14. Prince of Sacred Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prince of sacred circles- learning experiences. reverence for the growth processes made possible through the union of the sun and the earth. a tutor, teacher, or role model who shares knowledge and wisdom. one who nurtures the young, helping to develop newly planted ideas and concepts.

"Albus, you lied to me. I don't take well to that." Severus Snape sat in the Headmaster's office, looking very annoyed. 

"Sherbet lemon?" Albus inquired. Snape shook his head, refusing to be redirected. Albus sighed. "Severus, I had no idea that your bond with Harry would not fade by the time he had recovered." Snape continued to stare, his black eyes positively boring into Albus. Had he not been immune to it by now, Albus admitted, it would have been disturbing. "All right--fine, Severus. What do you want to hear? That I knew? That I anticipated? That I had no idea?"

Snape's jaw tightened. "Well, Albus. Perhaps. You. Should. Try. The. Truth." he ground out.

Dumbledore shrugged. "The truth is I had no idea what would happen when you healed Harry. The use of that sort of _Sanos_ is not well documented. Poppy and I were merely hoping you both would survive more or less intact. Poppy would not have been strong enough for all of Harry's energy, and they both could have possibly died; Harry may have had--reservations--about me, not to mention the fact I really can't afford to be taken away from my work because of the bonding. As you now know, Harry trusts you most completely."

This fact was utterly true, and still disturbed Severus. “And what of my _other_ duties?” he asked stiffly. “Surely you aren’t that confident in my ability to hide the contents of my mind from the Dark Lord.” 

The Headmaster’s mouth pressed into a thin line for only a moment, then he shook his head. “You would be surprised, Severus. I have the utmost confidence in you and Harry both.” 

“Unwarranted confidence,” Severus snapped.

“On the contrary, my boy.” The image of a chessboard rose unbidden in Severus’ mind, its pawns bearing Severus’ and Harry’s faces. Harry certainly believed in Dumbledore’s confidence. _’I am not addressing you, Potter.’_

Harry had been released from the Hospital wing the Monday after Hallowe'en, and had resumed classes as normally as he could. He carried a walking stick for support; making his way through the halls was still a strain. The strengthening of his body seemed to be lagging behind that of his mind, and the boy objected to using his magic to prop himself up. 

Madam Pomfrey insisted he go every day for a checkup, and by the end of each day Harry was exhausted from the strain of resuming his busy schedule and keeping his power restrained. The only manifest sign of his distress was the magical wind in his hair, which increased when he was under stress. Most of the students had no idea what to make of it, and many dismissed it as a strange glamour. Severus was the only one with a true idea of the strain Harry was under, as he felt it himself.

Their bond had not faded as Albus had said it would. The elder Wizard had just been attempting to soothe him through the initial strangeness of being bonded, especially to Harry Potter. Though their thoughts were mostly closed from each other, if Severus thought about it, he knew exactly where Harry was and what he was doing. If he closed his eyes, he could even see what Harry saw. And it was the same for the boy, as Harry had just illustrated. 

Sometimes, they would share nightmares of Harry's torture, and both were attacked by Harry's flashbacks, which lasted just seconds but left them reeling with disoriented horror. More than anything else, these flashbacks were a threat to the secrecy of the bond, as it was rather unsubtle when both teacher and student simultaneously nearly collapsed in terror and then tried to resist the urge to run to each other for the comfort offered by the bond. Severus was better at resisting than Harry, but if they resisted for too long it only ended in Harry’s mental deterioration, which echoed into Severus. In Potions class, at least, it was both easier and more difficult. If Harry faltered, Severus could stalk over and hold him up, rough and insulting, while Harry bore his sneering insults with the appropriate amount of angry acting. Outside of Potions, they simply had to wait, both attempting to hold Harry’s anxiety at bay until there was a moment between classes to soothe him. Though neither Severus nor Harry objected to the bond, per se, as they became more separate the situation grated against both man and boy’s desire for privacy. 

"Albus, what happened to him is unconscionable. The fact that you've roped him to me is..." Severus trailed off, not sure exactly what indeed it was, or for whom. Albus leaned forward, bridging the space across the desk and resting his chin innocently on his hands.

"Has Harry ever given you any occasion to believe he minds?" The smile playing around the old wizard's mouth was positively infuriating. Severus clenched his jaw even tighter. "Ah, as I thought. He chose you, and the bond will fade in time, Severus, as long as you and the boy have occasional physical contact. Your Occlumency and Schematic lessons should be more than adequate. Harry will grow to depend on you less and less." 

Severus stood up, still annoyed but unable to formulate any sort of decent argument against what Dumbledore had so smugly told him. It was impossible to convey the knot of minding and not-minding that their lives had become. He left the office in a flourish of robes. 

Then Harry was back in his mind, his thoughts communicating concern over Severus' seething. Severus brushed it off, but Harry's desire to comfort flowed warmly through him anyway. Internally, there wasn't really a way to hide things from the boy, but Harry didn't try to forcibly invade his privacy or pry into his thoughts. The insufferable child was mostly polite about it. In spite of himself, the ends of his mouth tweaked into the barest of smiles as Harry caught his train of thought and sent him, in effect, a huge grin. The boy was infernally annoying, especially in the fact that Severus found himself comforted by Harry's concern and pleased by the pleasure Harry took in cheering him. It was almost like having a friend. 

Of course, this was not all roses by any estimation. Severus was subjected to the terror of Harry's nightmares and flashbacks; they could feel each other's pain. A singe from an errant potion sent Harry to suck on his fingers in Charms, and the painful stab of a purposeful elbow into Harry's tender ribcage while he walked to class made Severus abruptly wince. It was strange to get used to. When they were always together, it hadn't been so bad, but now they were apart, and feeling someone who wasn't there was disconcerting. Each worried for the other, and it was pure relief for both when Harry walked into Potions, or when the knock of knuckles on Severus' doors signaled Harry's appearance for Occlumency lessons and they could see each other again. That was the part Severus liked least.

When Harry came for his Occlumency lesson Tuesday evening, they mutually agreed how utterly ridiculous it was for the teaching exercises to go on. Harry could block Severus entirely from his mind if he wished to. Neither liked the sensation whatsoever, it felt like a part of them was ripped brutally away. Instead, they spent the time indulging their bond, sitting close, their hands clasped lightly together, making small talk about their respective days. They had both skipped dinner; Harry called Dobby and had food brought to Severus' rooms. They ate most of the meal in companionable silence.

"I didn't know you Gryffindors ever knew when to keep your mouths shut," Severus observed between mouthfuls. 

Harry cocked an eyebrow, a trick he had adopted from the master himself. It seemed that body language crossed between them easily. "I didn't know brilliant Potions professors liked their meals interrupted by idle chatter."

Severus snorted. Then his eyes shot up to meet Harry's. "Did you just call me brilliant, Mr. Potter?"

"I did, Professor Snape." Harry's eyes just dared him to protest. He didn't.

"Well then." Nonplussed, he went back to his pudding.

"I could come up with some other adjectives, if that one's dissatisfying."

"Oh, do leave off, Potter." The words lacked rancor, and Harry could feel the buzz of his compliment singing through the Potions Master.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. Must protect the reputation and all that." Harry grinned as Severus' head shot up again, nearly spilling his hair into his food. Severus fought to control his expression as the warmth filled him.

"Flattery gets you nowhere, Harry." 

"Doesn't it? You called me Harry." He held Severus’ gaze until the older man looked away. It wasn’t right that the boy could catch him at these things, that he felt he needed to. Harry sighed. "Severus, you have to stop thinking that I'm roped to you, as if it's something bad. But you were the one I chose for it. You and no one else. You healed me, you brought me back and kept me here. Not Poppy, certainly not Albus. He gave me the barest tools of survival, and I used them.” Harry’s mouth pressed into a bitter line. “He’s not the one who interrupted his life to nursemaid a mad wreck of...” He waved his fingers, unable to define what he’d been reduced to. The scars on them were invisible in the dim room, but Severus knew they were there, fine lines of purplish-white, barely raised. “You're the one who saved me. You always are." 

Severus could feel the tangle of emotions in him, bitterness and acknowledgment and sadness and anxiety and respect and affection, could feel the boy’s damnable earnestness singing through his nerves. "The bond is going to keep weakening, Sev. I want to say this now, before you can't feel it anymore. I chose this, Severus Snape. I have never regretted it." Severus stared at the boy. Why would Harry bother to say these things? He couldn’t possibly understand the full import of his words, he was just a child. He did not know what Severus had seen, what he had done. It was the placation of a child, believing things that could be made right with words. 

“No,” Harry said, voice quiet and tired, “it’s not.” He shook his head, making his hair wave as though underwater. “I trust Albus absolutely--to be himself. He loves me, he needs me, he hasn’t saved me from anything at all. He didn’t save Sirius, and you--” He stopped, shrugged at Severus’ shocked expression. “It didn’t matter what you thought of me, even if you didn’t really hate me anymore before this. I knew that if you agreed you’d save me.” 

Silence hung heavy between them for a long moment. "You have a much stronger connection to me than I do to you, don't you, Harry?" Harry nodded. 

“Yeah, if I want to.” For him, the bond had faded slightly, but was by no means as weak as it was for Severus. He could still hear the other man's thoughts, though he had learned how to block Severus' daily constant monologue from his own brain. “Most of the time, I don’t want to. It’s...not fair.” His fingers tightened slightly around Severus’ hand even as the Potions Master scoffed at his use of the word ‘fair’. 

"I swore an oath to you, Severus. I will never tell. While I'm at it, I might as well give you another. I will never knowingly betray you, Severus Snape." Severus felt the magic of the oath pass between them, flowing through their joined hands. Harry’s gaze lifted Severus' eyes back to his. "It gets really lonely being the Boy Who Suffered Some Unknown Incident and Now Has Windy Hair, you know." Harry twisted his mouth into a parody of a smile. "It's weird, isn't it? Me, and you, and all this, and so suddenly. Everything's just become weird."

"Eloquent as usual, Mr. Potter." 

Harry gave a snort of true laughter. "Well, at least some things never change."

"Indeed no, Harry." Suddenly, a searing pain razed through Severus’ arm. Harry flinched along with him. "Things always remain the same," he ground between clenched teeth, making an attempt at levity in the face of Harry's rise of fear. He made to depart, but was stopped when Harry jumped up with surprising quickness.

"No. Don't leave yet." Harry put his left hand to Severus' chest, and closed his eyes. His right hand wove a complex pattern through the air. It only took a few seconds, but Severus felt something shift inside him when it was completed. "I've hidden our bond. And put something on you to protect you." His fingers were trembling where they touched Severus’ skin, his fear for the man’s safety mingling with his anxiety about being separated. “It will be all right.” 

Severus couldn't help himself. He placed a quick kiss on Harry's forehead before racing away to the Apparition point to answer his summons. Harry slumped down onto the surprisingly comfortable sofa, face pressing into the cushions. They had the same faint herb-and-bitterness smell that clung to the Potions Master's clothes. The charms he had put on Severus were complex; the effort exhausting. He had indeed made their bond invisible to Voldemort, but he had also put on a charm that would keep him there, with Severus, his emotions apparent to Severus but not to Voldemort. He lay down, closed his eyes, and began his vigil. He would not leave until Severus returned, and he could see with his own eyes that his bonded was all right.


	15. Princess of Swords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> princess of swords-the spiritual warrior; victory following an inner conflict of the soul; repose after struggle. basking in the warmth of the sun. processing the lessons of the sword, realizing its duality as a tool or a weapon.
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> **this chapter contains graphic depiction of self-harm via cutting (for spellwork purposes). i have placed a content warning for those who want to read the resolution of the cliffhanger from last chapter but do not wish to read self-harm content.**

Severus fell to his knees as the Cruciatus curse ripped through his limbs. "You," a high, cold voice sneered, "are late." Voldemort ended the curse, leaving Severus lying prone on the ground, panting. "Why?"

"I was detained with a student, my Lord." Severus struggled not to flinch as Voldemort invaded his mind, searching for the lie that was not there. It was true enough, Harry was a student, and had kept him from leaving immediately. He had another momentary struggle not to show surprise as a memory of Potter scrubbing out cauldrons came to the forefront of his consciousness. The surprise was soothed out of his mind nearly instantly by what could only have been Harry manipulating his _Schema_. Severus allowed himself to feel annoyed about the help he had not asked for before he quelled all thoughts of Potter. He had to face the Dark Lord. There was no room for the distractions that could invade at Hogwarts.

Voldemort stared down at the prone Severus Snape intently. This particular subject caused him grief with his excuses of 'students' and 'Dumbledore' and 'appearances'. Nonetheless, having a teacher in Hogwarts was advantageous. He gestured, and Snape got to his feet as quickly as he could, taking his place in the line of Death Eaters.

Severus was becoming more and more sure that Voldemort was either losing his touch or losing his mind. It did not take a genius evil overlord to realize that repeatedly inflicting the Unforgivable Curses on one's closest minions for any minor infraction would negatively impact both their loyalty and their mental functioning. By the time they were all allowed to depart, his entire body ached with the effects of the Cruciatus, and he was quite sure that the clarity of his mind was somehow due to Harry, although he had no idea what the boy could have possibly done for him. He reported immediately to Dumbledore's office, to relate what little valuable information he'd garnered. Albus didn't even bother to offer him tea.

"He told you absolutely nothing of value?" Albus asked. Snape put his head in his hands, causing his hair to fall forward in ragged curtains.

"Not that I remember, Albus. There were oblique mentions of future plans, and a rant about how his triumph over Potter would come." Severus sighed. "I'm starting to think that the Unicorn blood that Quirrell consumed is somehow affecting his mental processes." His hands tightened in his hair. "He has become pointlessly brutal, even to the _faithful_." The last word came out on a patented Snape sneer, full of venom and bitterness.

Albus sighed. "Very well, Severus. Get along to bed. I believe you will find a very worried Gryffindor waiting for you where you left him." Each man gave the other a fairly inscrutable look before Severus pulled himself tiredly out of his chair and left the office, his walk lacking its usual sweep.

Harry looked to Severus as though he was asleep on the couch, curled toward the fire, but as soon as he heard the door he was up and at the Potions Master's side. He took Severus' arm and invited the taller man to lean his weight. Touching Harry seemed to lessen his agony, if only a bit. 

"Why aren't you in bed?" Severus attempted to summon a biting voice, but failed. Harry simply took more of his weight, and began to walk him to the bedroom.

"I had to wait for you." Apparently, the boy thought it was a sufficient answer, and Severus was too tired to question him further. Harry helped him take off his robes and outer coat before pulling back the duvet and sheets and pushing Severus to sit on the bed. He removed the older wizard’s shoes, placing them neatly by the side of the bed, and motioned for him to lie down. He then removed his own robe, jumper, and shoes, and climbed in the other side of the bed. A flick of his long fingers quelled the candles, leaving the room in darkness.

"What do you think you're doing, Potter?" Severus' maliceless voice cut through the blackness. He felt Harry's spine settle next to his arm.

"Not leaving you alone and in pain." Harry wiggled around, getting comfortable in the strange bed. 

"You'll be missed." Severus rolled on his side so that his spine slid into place just above Harry's.

"No. I sleep in my rooms often enough. They don't expect me in the Tower anymore." Harry yawned. "I'm not leaving, Sev. You'll recover better if I stay." Harry's back pushed into Severus' with every breath. It was strangely comforting. 

“Stop calling me by that insipid nickname.”

"Goodnight, Sev."

"Goodnight." Exhausted, they both slept.

***

Severus woke with a scream in his throat to the sight of Harry Potter's tousled hair waving gently on the adjacent pillow. The sheer horror of his nightmare weighed heavily on his chest and Harry's back pressed into his stomach. Before he realized what he was doing, he clutched the boy desperately to him. 

Harry was instantly awake. He began murmuring comforting nonsense as he carefully worked himself around in Severus' grip until they were face to face. Harry’s fingers threaded into Severus’ hair, stroking it back where it stuck to his forehead. Severus' fingers dug into Harry's back.

"Sev, it's okay. You're not alone. No one's hurting you. You're not alone." Harry pulled Severus' head gently onto his shoulder, still stroking his hair. "I'm not leaving, Sev, you're not alone. Nothing here can hurt you." Slowly, the shaking subsided, and the grip of fingers on Harry's back lessened. Some time in between, Harry realized that the words he was repeating softly into Severus' ear were the same ones that the older wizard had often spoken to him. Harry only went quiet when the hands on his back loosened and withdrew. Severus abruptly turned and practically leapt out of bed.

"I apologize for my behavior, Mr. Potter. I acted inappropriately." He made to go to his wardrobe.

"Oh no you don't, Severus Snape." The words stopped him in his tracks. "You will not, and did not." Harry's voice was almost angry, nearly the tone of the teenager who had railed at the entire world a year before.

"I most certainly did, Mr. Potter. Now if you will excuse me." He started for the wardrobe again.

"I will not." Severus turned, torn between shock and fury. Harry sat in his bed, looking incredibly fierce for someone he knew couldn't see him clearly. "Five times. He _Crucio_ ’d you five times last night. Nightmares after that are pretty normal. I should know." Harry slid out of bed to stand in front of Severus. He didn't quite reach Severus' shoulder, except for his waving hair. His hand reached up, fingers barely brushing Severus' chin before dropping to tangle in his hair. It was a familiar gesture, the way he wove the coarse black hair between his fingers.

"You’re my bonded. For now, forever, it doesn't matter. I _feel_ you. And as long as I can feel you, I’ll be here if you want me. I have to." Harry looked down, staring at his bare feet, which had turned blue-white against the cold stone of the floor. "Maybe it's a Gryffindor thing," he said, so softly that Severus barely heard him. 

"That is quite enough, Harry." Snape's voice snapped, but he had referred to him as Harry. "Go get ready. Breakfast will be served shortly." Harry nodded, and then stopped and looked around the room. There were no windows, yet the room brightened just as his own bedroom would.

"Neat trick, this sunrise without windows." He stooped to slip his shoes on, and pulled his jumper over his head, throwing his robe on top. Harry left the room without excusing himself and before Severus could conjure up anything to say. The boy was far too cheeky for his own good.

Harry headed for his rooms. He had a fair idea what time it was despite his lack of a timepiece. _'Come on,'_ he thought, running a hand along the wall as he walked. _'I want a shower and a change before breakfast, you know.'_ He turned up the next corridor, and found himself near his door. He gave a little hop of glee as his doorkeepers greeted him. _'The castle listens to me!'_ His smile only broadened at the sarcastic snort that flitted into his mind. His pleasure must have traveled to the Potions Master.

 _’Of course it does. Every-bloody-thing caters to your whims.’_ Severus was tired, aching, simultaneously pleased and jealous of this latest accomplishment. Harry quickly sobered. The situation and condition of his bonded gnawed at the back of his mind. He’d known he was bonding himself to Dumbledore’s Death Eater spy, but the reality of the thing was harder to deal with. He rang for Dobby, requested his books from Gryffindor Tower and a set of clean robes, then stripped quickly and plunged himself into a hot shower, trying to work a tension out of his body that was not wholly his own. The effect of Cruciatus through their bond was not as extreme as experiencing it first-hand, but he was still aching enough that he spent a few minutes easing his own pain with _Soma_.

*** **[content warning begins here]**

At the end of the day, Harry trudged back to his rooms exhausted and frustrated. His _Schemata_ lesson with Severus had not gone well. They had bickered back and forth about the fact that the Potions Master was still in pain and refused Harry's aid, or to go see Madam Pomfrey. Severus had been in a foul temper all day, and Harry's attunement to him caused the degeneration of the younger Wizard's mood as well. It seemed that Severus' pain levels directly corresponded to Harry's proximity, and once he’d left in the morning Severus had begun to feel the after-effects of the previous night rather acutely. The hours they spent away from each other left the younger wizard aching and the older in pain. Harry had berated Severus for his stubbornness, and Severus had yelled at Harry for his cheek. It had bloomed into a near shouting match, their worry and pain and guilt and anger magnifying between them. Harry had broken first, and apologized, but he left the lesson feeling as though he had betrayed Severus in a way he could not put to words. He should be able to do more, even out of close proximity. Severus shouldn't even have to do what he was doing. Harry should have been able to better protect him. Severus had been subjected to Cruciatus because Harry had made him late. Harry had contributed to Severus' pain, and made it worse by not being more understanding of his bonded. He couldn’t tell whether these thoughts were his own, or Severus’, and the idea of the latter made him even more upset. He was near despondent by the time he took leave of the Potions Master, clamped down tightly around his feelings without stopping the flow of Severus’ emotions through the bond.

Harry sat down on the floor of his room, Phecda tangled in his hair and Dubhe draped across his shoulders. The snakes did not speak to him. He needed their silent presence more than he needed to talk. His hands trembled, fisting and stretching seemingly without his knowledge or control. He was a tightly wound coil, hair whipping around his head like a storm. His anger and frustration threatened to come to a boil, to burst out of him, and then sudden resolution swept like fire through him, burning out his anger, focusing it, making it pure.

" _Accio_ scalpel." The blade from his Potions toolkit flew across the room and into his waiting fingers. He had been fiddling in his small laboratory on and off, and tended to leave his tools open on a worktable. The scalpel fit comfortably in his hand and the blade was the sharpest he owned. His decision, once made, seemed so simple. He had to protect Severus and Albus. They were bonded to him, they needed each other. He needed them. He had failed Severus once, and Albus was undoubtedly the most important and necessary Wizard standing against Voldemort. He had no illusion that he was more powerful than his Headmaster, but he knew that his power could only add to his safety. This was what he was good for, this was his purpose. He hadn’t been able to protect himself, but he could offer them some small measure of protection.

He thought of his friends. They were important, Ron and Hermione, but he didn’t want them to be a part of this. There was still hope of keeping them from the worst of it. Harry was the crux of the Prophecy, and Severus and Albus were the only ones who could keep him alive until he could fulfill his role. He couldn't, and wouldn't, allow either of them to come to harm.

Albus had told him about the power of pain, about the raw and natural magic that the body contained. Pain purified, pain distracted, pain focused. If one could learn to use pain, it was a terribly powerful tool. Somewhere, in all his lessons, Albus had taught Harry how to use his own pain. Even now, he was learning from the silvery skin of the scars the Headmaster had left him from Bellatrix’s knives, faint and tight on the pale skin of his abdomen, knotted with magic.

Harry looked down at his left hand. He clenched and extended his fingers, watching the scars lighten and darken. They made fine raised lines all over his hands; the two most prominent were across the back, where Bellatrix had severed his tendons. One line stretched just below his knuckles, the other was about a half inch down, closer to his wrist. His right hand looked identical, except that under the two lines was the faint lettering _I must not tell lies_ , that Umbridge had forced him to etch into his own skin. He had not healed the scar, though he supposed he could have. It was one of the things he needed to remember his resolve. But the space, between Bellatrix's lines, it was perfect.

Over the summer, Albus and Harry had studied Latin, as it was the root of all the spells they commonly used. The Headmaster also wanted him to learn Gaelic and Sanskrit, but there were only so many hours in a summer and progress in those had been minimal. In Latin, however, he had made some inroads, having had a bit in grammar school and using it on a daily basis. Learning the language, Dumbledore maintained, would enable him to create spells for his own use. The words were just a focus point for a powerful wizard; the real magic was in intention. 

But Harry knew that there was magic, at least for them, in Latin that simply wasn't there in English. Perhaps it was just their paradigm. In that moment, he didn't really care. He mulled for a moment, gathering the words he wanted, and then preparing. He summoned a towel, placing his hand over it, preparing his canvas.

The press of the scalpel into the flesh of his left hand didn't sting. The blade bit, snagging slightly in flesh. It was straight, true, bloodless. He frowned at it, then balled his hand into a fist. Skin split along the line, capillaries opened. The line welled red, and with blood came pain. It was a little bite, a flash of ice. He opened and closed his hand, squeezing half-moons into his palm, until ice became fire and the line broke, leaking down his hand like a tear. He smiled at the pain. The world suddenly seemed to focus. This was for Albus.

The next cut began at the upper tip of the first. He pressed the scalpel until metal parted flesh, carefully running the blade parallel to his existing scar. The pain was immediate this time, and hot. Two more parallel lines completed the first letter. He pressed the towel down on it, clearing the spilled blood enough that it wouldn't interfere.

Each cut became easier and harder. Pain grew, swelled, narrowed his focus. The bite of the blade became a kiss, became a memory of Albus. The kindly smile. Twinkling blue eyes. Bones breaking. Hexes uttered in the same voice that offered sweets. The duel with Voldemort. A tender embrace. A grandfatherly look of pride. A stare of blank displeasure. The realization of being a pawn. A comforting hand in his hair. Pain, pain, pain. Love and pain. Blood, bones, sinews, pain, love, comfort. Absolution. Penance. Atonement.

Harry's pain tangled with his memories, crept into the slits in his skin. It did not leak out with his blood, which trickled down the sides of his hand and toward his wrist in thin tears. The towel soaked it up, turning a much brighter red. The letters were perfect and straight between the two long scars. 

_Ego Meam Protegam_

When he had finished, he blotted away his blood to examine his handiwork. It flamed as he flexed his fingers, and he smiled in satisfaction. All lessons hurt, all powers had price; his small pain would be a great measure of protection for them. 

This hand was for Albus. The other would be for Severus. He inhaled slowly, drawing power into himself, preparing to lay the threads across his own flesh. His body was the vessel of his power; his vessel should be marked for its contents and purposes. He closed his eyes, and then opened them again, fixing on his still-bleeding hand. The fingers of his right hand reached dexterously into the _Schemata_ , pulling for the threads that he needed and weaving them together. The process was painstaking, and he had no idea how long it took before almost everything was in place. He then reached into himself, drawing out parts of his own _Schema_ , weaving his bond to Albus into the complex spell. He ran his fingers over the whole complex and colorful braid, sealing the spell and setting it specifically to this scar, to his blood, to his essence. As he watched, it seemed to sink into his hand, clinging to the wound. Satisfied, he laid his right hand over his left, healing the open cuts, careful to leave the scar. He carefully checked the healing; making sure that it was just as he had wanted it.

And it was. It was perfect. _Ego Meam Protegam._ I protect my own. Mine. I am here to protect what is mine. Better yet, the bond was strong. He inspected it again, and saw that there was a complicated offshoot of threads that he hadn't seen before. They did that, sometimes. Some threads were only visible once they were part of the one who was looking at them. There was much he still didn’t understand about _Schema_ and _Schemata_. He traced the threads, spending long moments puzzling over them before he reached a tentative conclusion that deeply startled him.

The strange group of threads seemed to indicate Hogwarts. The castle, by all appearances, was bound to Albus, and Harry had inadvertently, or perhaps unconsciously, woven those threads into his protection. His spell now, in some way, extended to the castle itself. It was an interesting side effect that he had not considered, but it seemed fitting regardless. Hogwarts was the only real home he knew, and it kept those who were important to him safe. It added a new dimension of satisfaction to his work.

He turned to his right hand, taking the scalpel carefully in the newly healed left. This would be more difficult; he was not ambidextrous. He was, however, very careful. The pain was somehow more intense. It bloomed like a flower within him, focusing his consciousness until he was just a hand and a blade. 

The memories of Severus were harder, stronger, heavier. The glare of the hated Potions Master. The cutting insults. The gentle arms cradling his body. The look of sick horror at his broken body. The fury of a wand pressed into his Godfather's chest. The empty anger of the man who bared his Dark Mark to the Minister. The pain of Cruciatus. The terror in black eyes. The protection. The resentment. The quick kiss of relief on his forehead. Blood. Pain. Insanity. Comfort. Penance. Forgiveness. Absolution. Atonement. 

The cutting took a long time, but when he finished it looked just as careful and perfect as the other. He wiped the blood from his hand and cradled it on the reddened towel. He didn't want to stain his pants or the floor, wanted all his blood carefully caught. It was no harder to lay the spell with his left hand than it was with his right. Albus had made sure that he was equally capable with both hands as far as _Schemata_ was concerned. Many Wizards were helpless without their wand hand, and he had ensured that Harry had no such weakness. He had not allowed Harry to have such a weakness. Weaving the protection spell for Severus was actually easier, as their bond was much closer. 

He held both his trembling hands up in the dim room, inspecting his work. The inscriptions showed more lightly than the scars he had received from Bellatrix, though they too were raised. When he made fists, all his scars glowed whitely against his skin. He was most satisfied. He had failed them, but he had made his own punishment part of the proof that he would not fail again.

He threw the bloody towel into the fire. There was barely enough strength in him to stand, but he managed to change his clothes, and collapse into bed. He slept peacefully, unworried by dreams.


End file.
